Activities at Highview House Care Home

Sometimes residents ask us for something specific and it is always a great pleasure to be able to deliver.  Barbara, who likes to be known as Ara, asked us if we could let her see Jim Reeves.  We went one better and not only let Ara see him on the television, we got some songs (along with the lyrics) up onto the television for her.  This allowed Ara to sing along to some of her favourite songs and I think you can see by her face that she was absolutely delighted.  Ara has a beautiful singing voice and it was lovely to be able to do this for her.

Here at Highview we have been making Easter cards in preparation for Easter weekend.  Some of our residents have made cards and asked that they be posted out to relatives/friends which we have made happen. John made two cards for his family and Chandra made a card for her son. Margaret made a card for all the staff here at Highview. We kept a picture of the card and sent the original out to her family. Everyone really enjoyed decorating their cards and really got into the spirit of Easter by wearing Easter bonnets.

Our residents came together to enjoy an exciting virtual talk courtesy of the team at National Trust Talks Service.  The illustrated talk took us closer to one of Cliveden’s most famous families, the Astors. Our residents were able to discover what motivated William Waldorf Astor, America’s richest man, to purchase Cliveden in 1893 and how the estate became the centre of high society in the 1920 s and 30 s thanks to his son Waldorf and daughter in law Nancy Astor.

We had a lovely time joining Holly and Marie-Therese from the Wallace Collection, for a virtual introduction to the Collection, followed by a sensory exploratory walk through one of the museum’s most famous landscape paintings.  The Collection ranges from Old Master paintings to 18th century French furniture, arms and armour.   We all had a wonderful time and cannot wait to put our creative skills to a test and paint some landscapes in the upcoming days.

Following the recent Oscars, we had our very own awards day here at Highview.  We got the residents involved and they got to vote for who they would like to win from the chosen categories.  We then had our very own awards ceremony and the certificates were awarded to the staff by some of the residents.

The most Hardworking member of staff category had 2 winners and they were Judy Moodie (Senior Carer on the Ground Floor) and Tara Legg (Head of Unit for the Top Floor).  The funniest member of staff award was given to Marc Zimmermann (Care practitioner for the Top Floor) and the prettiest member of staff was won by Arwen Munro (Carer for the Top Floor).

Our hairdresser Kath Hall won the best hairdresser for always ensuring our residents look their very best and resident Julianne MacMillan won the award for the best bingo player.

We celebrate World Poetry Day, to this day, to honour the poets. Poetic expressions allow us to promote and spread teachings from different languages, particularly those that are endangered.  We celebrated this at Highview with a Poetry reading along with a prize for anyone who could guess the correct poem from a selection of quotes.  Many of our residents enjoyed reading some of the poems aloud along with the staff.