Activities at White Lodge Care Home

Today we celebrated International Nurses Day at Barchester White Lodge. We gave sincere thanks and gratitude to our own hardworking team of nurses and also to every nurse, past and present, who have worked so diligently to help and heal others during their time of need.

Residents who were once serving nurses and matrons were also presented with bouquets by our nurses, who wore period dress in memory and respect of Florence Nightingale. Jeanie, our Resident Ambassador proudly presented certificates and gifts to our nurses and gave thanks to them for all their hard work and care to fellow residents.

Anyone who has ever been cared for by a nurse, knows what an amazing job they do and how special they are. We cannot thank them enough.

Who knew eating healthy and vegetarian could be this great?! Our lucky residents at Barchester White Lodge were treated to a gourmet afternoon of a live virtual cooking class for Health and Wellbeing Day. They watched a chef preparing delicious recipes on the screen, then were delighted when the same recipes were created by Joel, our talented chef at White Lodge. Everything tasted as delicious as it looked and received a big thumbs up!

Recipes demonstrated and devoured were:

* Borlotti Bean and Dill Pate

* Greek Fritters with Tzatziki

* Coronation 'Chicken' (the chicken being Quorn chicken pieces which was very popular with everyone)

* Banana Bread

Our residents thoroughly enjoyed this activity and look forward to doing it again very soon.

We have been so fortunate this weekend to receive plant donations from residents’ families. Next week is our garden planting week when we will be working on the sensory garden and starting to create the memorial rose garden. We have a lot of garden to fill so welcome any donations of plants and flowers! Thank you so much for the donations to date we look forward to showing you the gardens over the coming weeks

We have an impressive school of Scrabble Gamers made up of our residents at Barchester White Lodge! It has now officially become one of their favourite, top played board games on both Lakeside/Dovecote and Memory Lane floors. Our clever residents are coming up with great word combinations and equally impressive scores. To keep up with demand, we've had to order a second Scrabble board so each floor has their own.

Its a perfect indoor activity to do when the weather changes and heavy rain and hailstorms come down. As well as improving cognitive skills, it's a fun social event with dare we say, a slightly competitive edge!

On a wet bank holiday Monday we took the opportunity to enjoy some cake! Residents really enjoyed decorating delicious vanilla buns and there were not shortage of tasters as we all enjoyed them with a cup of tea! We were also delighted not to have to wash up after with willing helpers on hand. White Lodge is a home from home and afternoons like this make us all feel we are really achieving this for our residents.

We had the pleasure this week of presenting the prizes from our "Hug the Home with Bunting" competition. Senior Activities Coordinator Tina Hughes presented the prizes to Laura Hilliard, Head Teacher of Brinkworth Earl Danby's CE Primary School and winners Freya and Olivia from Longleaze Primary School. We would like to thank all the children for their wonderful pictures and congratulations to the winners. The bunting has bought all the residents so much joy.