Activities at Waterside Court Care Home

Residents and staff at Waterside Court were delighted to welcome Live Entertainers back into the home. Fiona Harrisson, a soprano musician who specialises in music from the 1880s to the 1970s, was welcomed into Waterside Court for a fantastic afternoon of live entertainment.

Activity Coordinator, May Kidner, said: “I reached out to Fiona as soon as the guidelines changed to say that live entertainers were allowed back into care homes. Fiona put on a wonderful performance that had residents dancing and singing along. She also wears costumes as part of her act, which the residents really loved to see. We now have live entertainment booked in right through till Christmas and hopefully, in the near future, we can start inviting family members along as well."

We had a delightful lunch, specially prepared by our Head Chef, to celebrate National Fish and Chip Day. Chef whipped up some lovely flavoured batters for residents to try, along with some home-made tartare sauce and an option of mushy peas or regular peas, with mint flavouring.

General Manager, Roxana Moldovan, said: “It wasn’t just the residents that were excited when we found out there was a National Fish & Chip Day, the eyes of all our staff lit up too – fish & chips are such an iconic dish, everyone loves them and it’s even better when there is a good excuse to eat them!”

Our varied life enrichment programme keeps residents active, and provides a daily choice of engaging physical, mental and spiritual activities tailored to residents’ interests and abilities.

We had a great turnout for Waterside Court’s Residents Meeting this month. These meetings are held once a month and enable residents to give feedback around what activities they loved, what they would like to see more of and also to share any ideas on new activities they would like to try.

Activity Coordinator, May Kidner, said: “Residents Meetings are a fantastic example of how residents are at the heart of all we do. Person-centred care is the foundation of what we deliver here at Waterside Court, and the residents meetings are a prime opportunity for residents to actively input into their Life Enrichment programme. It’s always lovely to see how active and engaged they are in these meetings as it allows us to truly personalise the activities to their wants and needs.”

Waterside Court is getting ready to launch its very own Mobile Library! Thanks to the kind and plentiful donations from the community, we will be offering the option for residents to borrow books from a mobile trolley. For added authenticity, we will even be introducing a "checking in" and "checking out" system.

Residents and staff thoroughly enjoyed perusing the different books and sorting them into genres. We have a lot of avid readers in the home so our Mobile Library will be a lovely way to encourage residents to continue reading. The activity of sorting through the books was also an incredible opportunity to engage residents' social skills and encourage conversations around favourite books, authors, genres and much more.

Residents and staff at Waterside Court would like to say a huge thank you to Chelsea-based florists, Blooming Haus, for a wonderful live floristry demonstration.

We all had a wonderful time decorating and working on our arrangement and we are happy to say we were impressed with our skills in applying all the tips and ideas learnt during the class to make a colourful floral design.

We are also excited to enter the #BloomingBarchester competition following this amazing, virtual flower-arranging masterclass.

Michal Kowalski, Master Florist from Blooming Haus said; “The care sector has endured such a tough time of late, residents unable to see their loved ones, and carers working extremely hard.  So we leapt at the chance when Barchester approached us to stage a zoom flower arranging class. It’s a great opportunity for Blooming Haus to give something back, and we hope we provided some light recreational relief to the residents and care workers.  Besides shop bought flowers, we encouraged participants to use materials and foliage from the garden. We take a lot of our inspiration from nature and like nothing more than foraging around woodlands on a Sunday afternoon, we believe it assists us with the floral artistry we create.”

All of our displays contained foliage from our stunning gardens, along with some flowers purchased from Waitrose in Wallingford, who kindly offered us a discount to help with our display.

Residents and staff at Waterside Court had a lovely morning celebrating World Bee Day with bee-themed activities to commemorate the most important pollinator in the world.

Residents were treated to healthy tasting pots that included a delicious variety of fruit, honey-coated sesame seeds and a selection of different honeys. Whilst enjoying this tasty array of treats, we also discussed how bees positively impact our plants and flowers, which then led to some wonderful discussions around gardening.

Activity Coordinator, May Kidner, said: “It’s always nice to see residents positively engaging with activities. The tasting pots encouraged residents to explore lots of different tastes and textures and the conversations around bees and gardening provided lots of social stimulation.”