Activities at Paternoster House Care Home

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, a festival that marks the beginning of a new year on the lunisolar calendar, we enjoyed a creative session making beautiful lanterns and using the Chinese calendar to find out what Chinese Animal Year they were born in.

The activities team handed out fortune cookies and wished everyone good luck and prosperity with a wave from the Chinese good luck cat! 

Residents were delighted with the beautiful decorative ‘snake’ lanterns they made and loved how they shone once the nightlights were switch on. 

Our residents had the opportunity to be bang on trend this week when local independant retailer 'Sharon' brought her pop-up clothes shop to Paternoster House. Sharon's range of handpicked items were selected with the elderly in mind, chosen for easy wear and simple care within the home’s laundry process.

Bringing the High Street to our home means those who are no longer able to get out and about and shop for clothes themselves had the opportunity to browse the rails and select items of interest, giving them a sense of independence and time to try on anything they liked making the task of shopping stimulating and fun. 

Corina Popescu, General Manager said “We do our best to provide a wide range of activities and entertainment at Paternoster House as part of the lifestyle enrichment programme. We all know that buying yourself something new is enriching. Our residents and visitors have loved this pop-up shopping experience. We will definitely be doing it again, living in a care home doesn’t put a stop on you wanting to look and feel good!"

We bring a bit of magic to our home to engage our residents and stimulate their senses by providing weekly sensory sessions that help keep their minds active and stimulated. 

Interactive games can provide a sense of achievement, and tactile materials help bring back memories that encourage conversations. 
Our Aquapaint sheets are always an enriching experience, the joy of seeing the pictures come to life with each stroke of the brush puts the biggest smiles on their faces.

Our residents love getting out and about!

This week we enjoyed a day trip to the Blue Diamond Garden at Van Hage Great Amwell, Ware for a browse around its treasure-trove of plants, landscaped gardens and exciting shops for inspirational ideas to improve Paternoster Houses extensive gardens.

Gardener; Brian provided us all with a mountain of knowledge on each plant/bulb and taking lunch in their lovely cafe was just the ticket to top of a wonderful day.

This weekend we brightened up winter by celebrating our homes Open Day in conjunction with International Flower Day. 

Staff, residents, relatives and the local community came together to enjoy an open day full of flower themed arts and craft activities including paper flower basket making. The homes hospitality team provided our guests with delicious homemade nibbles to savour and we were joined by Dennis One Man Stand with for an afternoon full of song and dance!

Keeping with the flower theme Dennis had us all singing songs like 'Build Me Up Buttercup' and 'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)' and many more. Alongside his usual classics, all of which his backing singer resident; Violet and others could sing along to!

Staff made everyone feel welcome and were delighted to see so many new people visit our beautiful home. 

Corina Popescu, General Manager at the home, said: “Staff at Paternoster House are dedicated to making sure that the home is a hub of the local community, and this event, along with all the amazing themed activities and entertainment made it a wonderful day for all involved.”

Paternoster House has been a rainbow of colourful activities and exercise all week. Starting with ‘The Parachute’ which is a great exercise activity for seniors as the participants don’t realise, they are giving their upper body a good workout because they are having so much fun! 

For those who didn’t wish to join in, our activities team provided them with a sensory experience using the vibrant fabric book which is full of different textures for our touch senses to explore.

On Friday Glenn Bowers Health and fitness joined us and added more colour to his session with an array of floaty scarfs that our residents enjoyed waving and throwing into the air before catching them… mostly on the faces!