Activities at Oaklands Care Home

We have begun the Christmas festivities with starting to make our Christmas cakes here at Oaklands, we have made no less than 5 cakes, one for each of our community’s, one for our neighbours and one for our Christmas fair.

We were delighted that everyone who passed by said how wonderful the smells were that we were creating from the whiskey the fruit was soaked in to the cherries we were chopping and orange zest. As you can see it was a real team effort with everyone helping and helping each other when tasks were challenging single handed .The conversations were flowing about recipes our granny’s would do, how they would do and then the all important how we decorate our cakes!!

That will be in the next few weeks when we reveal our decorated cakes.

Our most recent paint and plonk session was Autumn themed and to say the red wine was enjoyed, would be an understatement, we will definitely be buying that red wine again!!

Residents can enjoy a tipple and a chance to chat and relax whilst creating a piece of art work. Some just join for the wine and company and that's just perfect! Some residents even go on to create masterpieces that we are then able to display within the home for everyone to enjoy.

Bring on the next one!

We were recently treated to a trip out to the Cambridge United Football Club Dementia Café, which is held monthly. The group was brought to us by one of our families who used to attend regularly before coming to live with us in the Care Home. 

The café represents and supports people living with dementia and their carers’, or even just carers coming together to support each other, share stories and engage in puzzles, singing and playing games whilst enjoying a cuppa and a cake. 

The host Jake, is fantastic, very friendly, caring and always offers support to all. He shows a real interest in making sure everyone is happy.

We were privileged this month to get a match side tour, which was amazing! We walked through the door that the teams use to walk out onto the pitch and we watched the groundsmen preparing the pitch for their upcoming game. Sarah talked about her husband and how he used to help with the first aid at the stadium, which lead onto a conversation about all the changes that were happening. We always leave feeling uplifted from the café events and look forward to the next.

We enjoyed a little trip out to support our local sports and social club in Bottisham and celebrated International beer day and enjoyed a cold pint or two with families and friends. The sun shone for us and made for a really pleasant afternoon for all.

Ray joked and ordered a pint of rum and coke for starters!!

All the residents and families enjoyed the change of scene and the chance it gave them to feel apart of the community.

We held our very own Olympic games within the home, running over the course of 3 days involving a variety of games being played and a quiz to round it off. We adapted the games to allow for all residents to take part whether they were mobile or cared for in bed, and for those less physically minded they could join in with the quiz to help earn points for their team. The aim was for each of our three community’s to win as many points as they can and then we finished the event with a closing ceremony announcing the winners and giving the winning team a gold medal and a Kevin the carrot soft toy for them to display with pride.

Our games were either closely matched to the Olympics with javelin game and discuss or a take on the event with our water feature being hook a duck, there was such a buzz about the home ,with lots of laughter and competitiveness coming out in mainly relatives families!!!

Our winning team was announced as our Elms community, big well done to all that took part and see you again in 4 years’ time.

We have been so lucky over the last few months with extremely talented friends of our care home donating us knitted items from worry worms and fiddle mitts to a whole fruit set but our most recent donation was a lovely lady called Margaret who buys dolls and then knits them two outfits each and she likes to donate to care homes, so when I received these 5 beautiful baby’s with outfits all made to measure it was wonderful and I knew straight away my residents would love them and take care of them and that’s just what has happened .Margaret was thrilled to see the joy her hard work had given our residents and she is currently busy knitting us two more for two of our ladies to adopt and love. Doll therapy is great for improving a residents well-being and their ability to communicate, it gives them comfort too. Thank-you so much.