Activities at Elm Bank Care Home

For World Environment Day we invited Louisa who works as a Waste Education and Communications Officer at North Northamptonshire Council

We had a wonderful talk about where our waste goes and what our recycling can be made into after it's been recycled. We learnt about the importance of recycling and how as a home we can improve on helping the environment.

Thank you Louisa for coming into the home and giving a talk to residents and staff.

Live entertainment in the beautiful Elm Bank garden courtesy of Steve Carmel. With songs from the 60’s Steve delighted our residents with his on-point Cliff Richard.

As the sun shone, and our residents soaked up its warming rays, Steve had us all up singing and dancing!

From knit and natter to potting plants, our residents really enjoyed getting to know the two young ladies; Lacey and Ella who visited Elm Bank to volunteer their time and make intergenerational links with the home.

It was lovely to see our residents chatting away about school and their interests as the girls spent time knitting, helping with lunch and getting their hands dirty potting plants with the gardening club.

Thank you both so much for spending quality time with us all; your conversation and infectious smiles made our day! 

Having the Craic at Elm Bank with Emily and Atlanta.

Our residents are always interested in hearing about new areas they have visited or hope to visit. We took a virtual vacation to Ireland after the morning's cooking session, which involved creating soda bread.

While seated comfortably in our armchairs and receiving an Irish passport and some Euros from Emily and Atlanta, we loved learning about the local culture, traditions, and music. Emily displayed a bodhrán, or "Irish drum," that her mother had lent her. We all managed a beat on the bodhrán while Irish music played in the background!

Kitchen baked our soda bread which went down very well with afternoon tea

Who doesn't enjoy a trip to the local pub? Last week, a happy band of Elm Bank residents met with friends, and family members for lunch at The Trading Post in Kettering.

We look forward to the next outing as we fulfil our residents' wishes. We intend to visit many different local establishments, pubs, cafes, and points of interest around Kettering during the summer months ahead.

In celebration of International Museum Day, which took place on May 18, our staff and residents had the pleasure of viewing museum artifacts from the comfort of their armchairs, courtesy of Northampton Museum & Art Gallery.

On receiving the museum object boxes full of original and replica items, documents, and resources for our Activities team staged a ‘Day at the Museum’ session.

During the activity, residents in the group or during 121 room based sessions learned about everyday Victorian household items and WWII memorabilia. They got to handle everything from old coins to shells and fossils.

The Victorian children’s clogs, pottery, and old iron were very interesting for residents Sheila and Beryl, who commented that they found them all fascinating. Sheila said the iron would take hours to heat up before you'd be able to use it and Beryl's favourite item was the ladies shoe, as it reminded her of the shoes her mum once wore.

Katie Hudson, General Manager at the home, said: "Our residents love learning about new and old things, so they were all really interested to find out more about the visiting museum items. We’re now looking to book an actual day trip to Northampton Museum to view the many more collections on show."

We'd highly recommend you hire the collection for care home activities and schools projects. Or, as we intend to do, take a visit to your local museum. https://www.northamptonmuseums.com/site/index.php