Activities at Lakeside Manor Care Home

We had a super special day for a few residents of Lakeside Manor Care Home. The activity co-ordniators Steph Ozard and Jenna Stuchfield took four of the men from the care home for a WetWheels boat trip! WetWheels is a charity organisation, so rely on donations for these fantastic trips to go ahead. We appreciate all who have donated to the charity and thank them and the staff for making this possible. It was an amazing day, the volunteer crew of Wet Wheels were so friendly and made us all feel safe. We did not have the best weather, but we were given big cosy ponchos to wear, which made us look the part and kept us warm and dry. This was such an amazing experience for our residents who are all in their late 80’s and were given an adventure they would not have realised possible thanks to WetWheels Jersey!  The cherry on top? We spotted dolphins!

Here at Lakeside Manor Care Home we have a lot of Parties! We are always singing and dancing to music by visiting musicians, singers, bands and choirs. We enjoy visiting church services and visiting school groups. This is something we are very grateful for here and because of this we decided to ‘give back’. One of our residents, Tony Keogh, said “we are always on the receiving end of people entertaining us and bringing us happiness, it would be nice if we could be the ones giving for a change”. Tony is a very keen singer and here at Lakeside Manor we are always having sing alongs, so he came up with the idea that we could be the entertainment and go and visit other care homes to bring them joy. So, that’s exactly what we did! We took five residents to our sister home Lakeside Care Home and we sang to the residents there. We took song sheets, so they could join in and sung a lot of songs they all knew off by heart. It was a great success! Afterwards we joined them for tea and cake and they thanked us and said it was wonderful. Tony was very proud of this achievement, he said it was lovely to be the one making a difference to other people. We plan on visiting more care homes around Jersey, giving back to our community and bringing them some happiness to their days!

The feeling of excitement was in the air as we all woke up to take a look out the window to see if the promised snow had come and there it was! A white blanket was lying over all of Jersey Channel Island. The view from the windows of Lakeside Manor was sparkling white, from the floor to the top of the trees and rooftops glistening with shimmering snow. Only a few inches thick and the sunshine on its way we knew we had to make the most of the moment and build a snowman for the residents to see and put a smile on all their faces.

The activity co-ordinators got to work building the snowman whilst the residents ate their lunches. To finish his look he was given a top hat made by one of our residents Ron, the top hat had Ron’s name on it, so it was decided that the snowman would be called Ron Junior.

When the residents finished their lunches and came to the café they were surprised to see Ron Junior the snowman looking back at them with his green button eyes and wonky smile. We then had a party in celebration of our snow day, whilst dancing to the live music, Ron Junior the snowman looked in at us smiling at our joyous party. When the party was over a few of the resident’s wanted to go and meet the snowman, so carefully we went and had a photograph with him, chuckling the whole time at his silly smile.

After the residents were back in the warmth, one lady Violet decided that she wanted to have a snow fight! So the fight took place with Jenna the activity co-ordinator and Violet, she laughed and laughed as she pelted Jenna with snowballs! Violet said she had such good fun! This was a very special day as snow is rare in Jersey and the residents had childhood magic for one day, until the beautiful sunshine came out and we waved as our snowman melted away and all that was left was a few buttons and his top hat left on the frosted ground.

The Lakeside Manor Care Home residents Barbara, Violet and Vera had a fantastic outing to visit the horses at East Riding School this week. Stephanie and Jenna the activities co-ordinators at Lakeside Manor knew that this was an especially important visit for Barbara Cunliffe as she has been an avid horse rider all of her life and when she speaks about horses she lights up and explains how much she loves them. East Riding School were brilliant! A few of the girls that have been riding horses at the school for 5-7 years, were very welcoming and gave us a tour of the stables. Barbara, Violet and Vera fed and petted the horses whilst beaming with smiles. It was very chilly so after a wonderful experience we all climbed back on the bus and had a much needed cup of tea before heading back home to Lakeside Manor.