Activities at Westvale House Care Home

Remembrance Sunday is a day to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts.

During the day, our residents enjoyed putting a remembrance display together, with their own handmade wreaths and poppies, which turned out beautifully.

We enjoyed a special church service to honour veterans and armed forces members who have died in the line of duty and we read some war poems.

It was a lovely day of remembrance, enjoyed by all.

We celebrated the Cliff Richards birthday in style at Westvale House. Our residents had a fun quiz about Cliff Richard, followed by a round of 'Name That Tune' based on music from the 1960s.

We brought the music of Cliff Richard to all the communities bringing back many memories of music and we reminisced with stories from the 1960s, It was a great afternoon enjoyed by all.

Residents at Westvale had a brilliant day on Thursday 4th November as they marked the start of the Hindu festival of Diwali, popularly known as the ‘festival of lights’.

Residents helped with making colourful patterned rangoli and lighting ‘diyas’, small oil lamps which are lit to signify the triumph of good over evil. Diwali honours Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, the lamps help Lakshmi find her way into people’s homes.

The homes hospitality team prepared traditional Indian dishes including a range of warming curries, spicy samosas, crispy bhajis and papadums with lime pickle and chutneys followed by traditional Indian sweets such as laddoo and barfi for the residents to enjoy.

Westvale commemorated the signing of the Armistice Day agreement on the day that the guns finally fell silent.  They joined the rest of the United Kingdom in holding a two-minute silence at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.

As well as marking Armistice Day by wearing poppies and observing the national two minute silence, residents took part in therapeutic activities including making poppy displays and listening to old wartime songs.

We celebrated Remembrance Day with English National Ballet Associate Dance Artist, Richard Bermange, who led a creative dance workshop for our residents followed by a special extract of Akram Khan’s work Dust, premiered in 2014 as part of ENB’s Lest We Forget programme, commemorating the First World War.

ENB company dancers, Erina Takahashi and James Streeter performed the extract and provided some insight into this moving work.

Our residents had a wonderful time as they listened, danced and were able to singalong to famous war time music performed by ENB Associate Musician, Matt Hartley-Stevens.

We had a lovely time joining Chef Alex Connell from Vegetarian for Life for a Halloween-inspired virtual cooking demo.

Alex demonstrated how to prepare a few themed dishes, such as root vegetable tagine, roasted butternut squash mac-n-cheese, chocolate pots with piped biscuits and flapjacks.

Our residents were delighted to be a part of this lovely virtual culinary session by tasting the vegetarian dishes from the comfort of our home.