Mellish House Residents Busy with Activities

The residents and staff at Mellish House Residential Home have been busy with a range of activities. Here is a round up…

- Harvest Festival
Each year we celebrate Harvest Festival with a service led by our local church as it is an important part of the year in our rural community. The table was decorated with fruit and vegetables and a loaf depicting a sheaf of corn with a mouse hiding among the corn which was made by a local baker. Familiar hymns including “We plough the fields and scatter” were sung which everyone remembered from their childhood.

- Pottery
We are in the process of creating an underwater activity wall in one of our corridors for the amusement of passing residents. Over the last few weeks Shaun our pottery tutor has helped residents make and glaze clay sea creatures to display on this wall. The scene has been designed and painted by Ron (our SMO) and our Health and Wellbeing Coordinators. Grace our knitting supreme has knitted a mermaid and an octopus as well. All these craft activities are great at keeping minds and fingers nimble and busy.

- Knit and Knatter
Our local hospitals palliative care team has recently requested knitted blankets for patients to provide warmth and comfort whilst they are inpatients. Grace our champion knitter has accumulated a vast collection of colourful knitted squares which with the help of residents and visitors to the home during our ‘knit and natter’ tea parties have been made into these blankets. The blankets are then kept as keepsakes and taken home.

- Twilight Encounters
Brenda visited with her family of owls from ‘Twilight Encounters’ this gives the residents the opportunity to see and touch the owls up close. We invited 15 children from a local primary school to join us and to meet the owls. The afternoon was a great success both residents and children talking and exchanging ideas.

- Button Mosaics
Over the last 15 years of working at Mellish House l have collected stray buttons and these have mounted up. We had a pleasant hour or so sorting these into colours (a male resident who rarely joins in activities bounded across totally engaged in this activity). Our SMO gave us offcuts of MDF board and residents were invited to paint them in bright colours and simple shapes were suggested and outlined in black. Many of the residents like me had loved sorting through their grandmother’s button tin as a child. These buttons have gone on to give hours of pleasure all over again. The pictures made speak for themselves.

Mellish House Care Home is a purpose-built home providing residential care for up to 48 elderly residents living with a form of dementia.

If you would like to find out about life at Mellish House or come and visit, please do contact us on 0808 223 5523 or email [email protected].