Activities at Thistle Hill Care Home

Happy Valentine’s Day. Our home was filled with flowers, cards, balloons and decorations as we celebrated the day of love in style with sweet treats and gifts.

We marked the day by making and sending cards to loved ones; making and baking chocolate cakes, biscuits, cupcakes; watching a romantic film and having a conversation about romantic moments in their lives.

Our residents had the opportunity to taste delicious themed sweet and savoury treats, prepared by our talented chef, whilst listening to all-time favourite love songs.

It was a lovely day and it was wonderful to see everyone go to so much effort to get involved with the day’s festivities.

Our Residents enjoyed celebrating the Scottish holiday of Burns night with poem readings from the works of Robert Burns, dancing to Scottish folk music and a virtual bagpipe performance.

Residents enjoyed a wee dram of Whisky or a glass of Irn Bru as we toasted the Haggis courtesy of our talented team in the kitchen

We had a lovely time joining Chef Alex Connell from Vegetarian for Life for a Valentine’s-inspired virtual cookery demonstration.  Chef Alex created some delicious Valentine’s Day-inspired vegetarian desserts, which our residents had the opportunity to try too.

First, our residents sampled a wonderful sticky toffee pudding, which was absolutely heavenly. Then they tried hazelnut truffles which were a huge hit and finally they were treated to a chocolate orange cake which everyone adored.

Staff and residents at Thistle Hill Care Centre in Knaresborough welcomed in the Year of the Tiger with a day of celebrations and activities.

Inspired by Chinese culture and traditions, the home was decorated with hanging red lanterns. Residents learnt all about the traditions and superstitions of Chinese New Year.  Chef, Ewelina cooked up an oriental feast for lunch. Residents enjoyed the delicious food and Chinese tea brewing ceremony.

Mandy Scott, General Manager of Barchester’s Thistle Hill said: “We have had a brilliant day, the home looks absolutely wonderful decorated all in red and we all had such fun finding out what animal we are, the associated traits and reading each other’s horoscopes.  The residents loved watching videos of traditional lion and dragon dances and had a little dance too!

Today we wanted to share a post of celebration for our beloved woodland walk 'Charlottes Way' and it's history. Our cherished woodland walk was opened on the 5th December 2016 by Former England footballer and sports presenter, Chris Kamara. The walkway, Charlotte’s Way, is named after Charlotte Whittaker, the stepdaughter of Leeds MD, John Middleton, who launched a fundraising campaign after Charlotte suffered a brainstem injury.

Charlottes Way was the result of the tireless hard work by John and Charlotte’s mum, Linda, who raised £10k to rebuild and reopen a peaceful woodland footpath at the rear of the home which had been shut due to disrepair. Now wheelchair accessible, the new trail features rest areas and seating and will be further enhanced by plants to maximise residents’ enjoyment of the vibrancy of the changing seasons.

Staff and residents at Barchester’s Thistle Hill care home got out their binoculars and bird books to support this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch initiative.

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch is an annual event to try to understand what is happening to our native birds. The idea is to log all the birds you see in your garden, from your window or in your local park in a one hour period any time between January 28th and 30th.  Last year over 1 million people took part and between them they counted 17 million birds.  Sadly we have lost over 38 million birds from the UK skies in the last 50 years so it is vital we do all we can to protect our birdlife.

Residents had a brilliant time filling up birdfeeders, making fat balls to attract the birds before they got started and then looking up the different species in their bird books to make sure they were logging them correctly.