Activities at Ochil Care Home

Everything was red, white and blue as Ochil celebrated the Queen’s birthday.  The home was decorated  with banners, flags and everyone celebrated with delicious home-made cakes and cup of tea. As part of the celebrations the home entered Barchester HealthCare's ‘Bake a cake fit for the Queen’ competition. Residents came together and spoke about what the Queen meant to them and all had a great day.

Residents of Ochil joined in with the nations celebration of National Cream Tea Day on 26th June.  It was a question on everyone's lips, was it the jam or cream first!   Everyone had a yummy afternoon tea full of mouth watering treats - homemade scones, pancakes served with clotted cream, strawberries and jam accompanied by a cup of tea or coffee . It was lovely for the residents to get together and have a good chat keeping social distance in mind.

Residents and colleagues at Ochil have been receiving lovely postcards of kindness from the community with nice stories of what they have been doing, what their hobbies and interests are and also drawings and photos of pets they have and asking residents how they are and what they enjoy doing. 

Postcards for Kindness is incredibly beneficial for the residents as it provides a boost in wellbeing and helps to create connections with people from all over the world.

Easter treats brought smiles to our residents as the home held an Easter raffle with a selection of prizes to be won.     Everyone had a wonderful day enjoying coffee, home-made cake and a good old chatter before the winning tickets were drawn.  It was a fun-filled afternoon with musical entertainment, games and delicious Easter cakes.

The theme continued with a baking session, for those budding bakers in the home in making cupcakes and decorating with butter icing, sprinkles and some mini eggs. Everybody enjoyed making a mess and eating the cakes.

Residents took advantage of the Spring sunshine as we took ourselves outdoors to plant our flowers in the garden, and flower arranging in-doors to be bring the garden inside.  Everyone got stuck in filling posts and planting the bulbs.

It certainly brightened up our day and it was a great afternoon for all involved. With all the lovely weather we have been having we had an afternoon of flower planting and flower arranging by bringing the garden inside, the residents got stuck in filling all the pots and planting some bulbs, it certainly brightened up our garden and our residents day, it was a great afternoon for all.

It has been great seeing the spirit of the community pulling together to help each other were we can, we have been very lucky here at Ochil to receive such lovely things from our community which have been making lots of our residents smile.

We had a lovely young girl who came to gardens grounds of Ochil and played the bagpipes to our residents who were in the lounge areas watching from the windows, it really made our residents happy and they loved hearing the bagpipes as well as some well-known Scottish songs.

We have received so many amazing drawings, photos and letters from school children who are currently off school during lock down and wanting to lift our residents spirits, many being lovely rainbows as a symbol for staying strong during these hard times which we have displayed on our windows throughout the home as well as responding back with our own letters, drawings and kind words.

In and around our home we are trying to stay as active as possible by carrying on our ‘Love to Move’ light exercise class, having flower planting afternoons inside the home, having fun with various games such as bingo mornings and domino afternoons, getting messy with arts and crafts and being creative with cake baking.