Activities at Thistle Hill Care Home

The staff and residents at the Thistle Hill Care Centre in Knaresborough have been flipping and turning pancakes all morning in preparation for their annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Day celebrations.

The Thistle Hill Care Centre has marked this year’s Pancake Day with a live cooking demonstration courtesy of our activities team with a helping hand from our residents resulting in lots of delicious pancakes! Ewelina the head chef at the home, flipped more than 100 pancakes, serving them up with sweet and savoury fillings for all the eager staff and residents over dinner time.

She said: “My secret to the best pancakes is all in the whipping. Give it some elbow grease when mixing the batter and you’ll get perfect pancakes every time. I like experimenting with the fillings – the residents’ favourites are, chocolate spread and banana and of course, good old fashioned lemon and sugar!”

The Thistle Hill Care Centre was filled with flowers, cards and sweets in celebration of St Valentine’s Day. 

Staff and residents celebrated the day of love by hosting a romantic meal for two for our resident couples, courtesy of our Head Chef Ewelina.

Following on from this our residents danced away the afternoon with a fabulous musical performance by home favourite singer Rochelle.

The Thistle Hill Care Centre in Knaresborough has been finding out the favourite stories of residents and staff and sharing them during National Storytelling Week.  Many of the residents at the Thistle Hill Care Centre have a knack of telling a great story or two, and National Storytelling Week is a perfect opportunity to experience the joy of storytelling.

Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms in the world so, to help keep the custom alive, residents have been reading their own favourite short stories, tales they were told as children to other residents, their families at home and local nursery children.

As part of Barchester Healthcare’s Book Club Corner series of virtual events, staff and residents at the Thistle Hill Care Centre in Knaresborough were treated to an hour in the fascinating company of Mark Piesing, author of ‘N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Artic Airship’.

Mark Piesing is a successful freelance technology and aviation journalist and author. He writes for titles such as BBC Future, The Guardian, Wired, and The Economist. N-4 Down is his first book.

The Thistle Hill Care Centre in Knaresborough prepared a traditional Burns Night Supper to the tune of bagpipes as the fun continued throughout the day.

Staff and residents at the home were involved in a number of activities including a stellar bagpipe performance courtesy of Mhairi from the Leeds Piping Band, sampling Scottish snacks and beverages, to poem readings and finally toasting the haggis, including giving the time-honoured address to the ‘Great chieftain O’ the pudding race’ to mark this great Scottish institution.

Ahead of National Storytelling Week which starts on January 30, staff and residents at Barchester’s Thistle Hill Care Centre in Knaresborough were treated to a fascinating session of sensory storytelling by Art Historian, Jon Sleigh, and the Historic Royal Palaces community team.

The Historic Royal Palaces are a charity who love and look after six of the most wonderful palaces in the world so that we can all enjoy them.  They tell the stories of monarchs we know, and the lives we don’t.  They let us explore these wonderful properties and set our minds racing.