Activities at Tennyson Wharf Care Home

We celebrated the Chinese Luna New Year of the Horse with this greeting. Used to wish a Happy New Year. It literally means wishing you wealth and affluence! We learnt about the history of the celebrations and how the animals of the Chinese zodiac were chosen and tried to guess each other's signs. We opened fortune cookies hoping they would come true.

Following the tradition of letting off fireworks, we made our own paper fireworks with our own whoosh and bang sound effects! 
Hilary shared stories with us of her visit to China. She said the Great Wall had parts that were steeper than Steep Hill! Emme, our volunteer, shared photos of a recent business trip her father had taken to China just last week.

It was a lovely day finished off with a delicious menu prepared by our chef Emma. She had even taken the time to print the menu with Cantonese and Mandarin symbols, names and pronunciations. Residents enjoyed noodle soup, orange chicken and mango pudding. 

Tennyson Wharf regularly welcomes Darwen the Falabella therapy pony to the home. This last visit was made even more special as Darwen accompanied his younger brother, Faberge, for his very first therapy visits to a care home.

Both ponies are owned and rigorously trained by Brenda Depear who is a licensed substance abuse and rehabilitation counsellor who also specializes in traumatic brain injuries and Dementia care. The ponies provide comfort and support to all of her clients and love visiting care homes.

We had a brilliant afternoon when Owl Adventures visited us. Francesca brought a barn owl, little owl and hawk for our residents to learn about. There were many questions and much excitement. 

June was surprised at how soft the birds were and Sue commented on how light they were when sitting on her arm. It was fascinating learning about these glorious birds and not something you experience every day! 

Tennyson Wharf’s Christmas activities program has been in full swing with a choir from Nettleham All Saint’s Church, Abba Mia tribute act, Darwen the mini pony who dressed as a reindeer, festive flower arranging, outings to see the lights of Lincoln city centre and Harmony Lincs Barbershop Choir to name but a few Residents will also enjoy a feast of festive foods prepared by the home’s chefs, Dawn Bailey and Emma Roberts.

This was the big decider in our Staff vs Residents Quiz as we were One All. The competition was fierce and the questions tough. Everyone said the 'Know Your Neighbour' round where we had to guess facts about each other was eye-opening. Who Knew our lovely Karen used to breed Guinea pigs – 32 of them, or that Deepu could speak 4 languages? No one knew that Connie taught at a school in Greenland! It was a lot of fun. 

We are sure there will be more staff vs. resident quizzes in the upcoming year. Let's see if the Staff will hold on to their title of Supreme Champions!  

Darwen proved to be the best big brother when he showed Faberge the ropes! It was Faberge's first ever home visit after several years of training from the fabulous Brenda. He was very well-behaved, Darwen kept a close eye on him and showed him exactly what to do. 

Our residents fell in love instantly and could not believe we were lucky enough to have two gorgeous falabellas visit us. Thank you so much Brenda for bringing so much joy and comfort to our home. We really do appreciate how much training and grooming you do. Darwen and Faberge are always so well-behaved and have fresh hair dos and shoes!     

Our home was filled with flowers, cards and sweets in celebration of St Valentine’s Day.    Staff and residents celebrated the day of love by showing love and kindness to their carers with handmade chocolate truffles and heart decorations. They held a practical ‘Heart Healthy’ presentation giving residents handy hints for better sleep, reducing stress and gentle exercises. Residents were excited to play a special edition of Valentine’s bingo, raised £70 in a raffle and finally enjoyed a medley of love songs performed by Clearer Productions.

June, a resident said: “It has been a lovely day. It was wonderful to see everyone go to so much effort to get involved with the day’s festivities. I really enjoyed the raffle and bingo, I won two prizes! 

Keith celebrated his 100th birthday in style with a party attended by 4 generations of his family and friends that travelled from far and wide.  His daughter, Hilary, made a wonderful ‘This is your life’ video presentation and later gave an oboe recital accompanied by her grandson, Fred, on the piano. 

Receiving a card from the King and Queen was the icing on the cake! Asked what his secret to life was, Keith responded that he did not have a secret but just kept on going.   

Oh, Yes We Did! 

We had the best afternoon with Northeast Producers Ltd and their pantomime production of Alice in Wonderland. Only two actors performed every character in the show! The girls worked so hard to entertain us and everyone loved the fun and singing along.  The afternoon was rounded off with a carol concert.   

It was really fantastic, said our resident Lesley. We had market stalls with vendors selling handbags, plant pots, cards, jewellery, dolls and so much more. The star of the show was a hot chocolate bar selling luxury Italian hot chocolate that our residents are still talking about three days later! 

The games were great fun, including the Christmas Tree Corn Hole, Snowman Tin could be shy and guess the name of the cuddly toy. Residents were amazed at the wonderful raffle with so many prizes to be won. A visit from Santa added to the festivities. Everyone loved the treats from his sack! The fayre was a huge success with residents enjoying themselves so much and raising over £500 for the Residents Fund.        

We had the most fun when Lincoln Minster School joined in our International Lego Day celebrations. We started our afternoon with a few fun facts. Did you know Lego comes from the Danish word meaning 'Play Well' or that, if put end to end, the number of Lego bricks sold each year would stretch 5 times around the world?!

Then the competition began! Teams were tasked with building the tallest towers and various animals. The winners in each category received yummy chocolates. 

It was a truly great afternoon with a lovely new friendship.     

Haggis and Bagpipes galore to commemorate Burns Night. Finlay MacGhee, Pipe Major with the Royal Airforce, performed the address to the Haggis, gave a fascinating talk on the history of the bagpipes and tartan, his travel adventures with the RAF and his meeting with Queen Elizabeth 2nd.  Residents enjoyed traditional Scottish fare including haggis, neeps and tatties, of course, prepared by our fabulous head chef, Dawn Bailey. 

The afternoon was spent engrossed in a whisky tasting class prepared by Karen Holmes from our Administration department.  Our residents loved every minute of the day, with June saying ‘It's been a really wonderful day, so interesting.’

Staff and residents at Tennyson Wharf are celebrating receiving exceptional feedback in the home’s customer satisfaction survey.  Everyone is as proud as can be after the home scored incredibly highly in all aspects of the survey.

An impressive 87% of the residents at Tennyson Wharf stated that they would recommend the home to a friend.  In the six different areas of the survey covering people, care, environment, activities, dining and communication, the home consistently scored over 81%. The home’s top score out of the six areas were for the calibre of its staff, and the quality of the care delivered, both scoring 95%, followed by the home’s environment at 94%. All team members are thrilled to have received such brilliant scores.

Pure Joy!

Such a wonderful treat to have the children of Emma Jane Dance join us. They entertained us with a medley of Christmas songs, and then we joined in with carols at the end. The children brought our residents so much happiness and laughter. It's not every day that we get a singing, dancing turkey visit us!      

It was a very exciting day to welcome alpacas Rio and Kiril from Big Sky Alpacas to our home. Residents loved being able to feed them carrots and feel how soft they were, also learning the difference between alpacas and llamas.

The alpaca's visit was paid for by money provided from the Residents’ Fund. This is money raised in our raffles on our Summer and Christmas fayres, that residents decide how to spend for their use and the benefit of all residents. Residents had voted overwhelmingly in our residents' meeting that they would like to see more animals in the home and Rio and Kiril were the result of that. We all agreed it was money well spent!