Lake View Retirement Home

21/01/2026

This week in preparation for the 'Great British Bird Watch' through the RSPB held on 23rd-25th January, we have had many bird themed activities.
The ladies colouring some beautiful bird pictures, word searches/crosswords and wildlife quizzes, conversations, bird watching and also preparing the many bird feeders with lard balls, peanuts and mixed seeds.

This has helped our hand eye coordination, increased fine motor skills, concentration as well as having a positive impact and sense of achievement.

Pat needed to get a little more physical, in building our new bird feeder mount, using his brute strength and problem solving skills, he felt very accomplished when he'd finished.
We will all be watching out of the windows and wandering in the garden (weather permitting) over the weekend to tally up our bird spotting totals.
🐦🐦‍⬛🐦🐦‍⬛

19/01/2026

It's Complete….. our beautiful decking area and garden fencing has finally been finished. Here are a couple of our lovely ladies sat outside enjoying a little sunshine.

We will be sourcing raised flower beds and high benches, plus ordering some garden furniture and bird tables.

We would be very grateful if anyone has any time to assist us with painting, bug and bird house making, fruit/veg planting, in the run up to spring or if anyone would like to donate some seeds, pots/plants or ornaments that we can place in the garden that would be very much appreciated.

16/01/2026

Today we had a full day of sensory activities.
Sensory input is crucial for the elderly especially those with dementia, it helps maintain cognitive function, enhances social communication & interaction.
It helps reconnect with memories with familiar sounds/smells/touch and tastes.

We had all our senses awoken, first with taste... we tried various different flavours & textures to see if we could guess what they were?

Moving on to touch, we asked residents to search a sensory bag just using their hands to find the texture asked for i.e.- smooth, spikey, squishy?

Then we did a sounds tests, listening to various household sounds & animal noises to see which ones we recognised.
Lastly was smells, we used our scent pots to sniff up a whiff, to see which ones we liked and which we didn't.

13/01/2026

Tasty Tuesday treats….
Today we had Cadbury and Nestle chocolates to reminisce about, we looked at pictures from past times in the factories, to the transport/delivery vans and the classic original wrappers.
We talked about the costs and old coins used, our favourite treats that we remember saving up for, then we looked at how the wrapping and chocolates now differ (along with the inflation)

We then got to sample some lovely chocolates which all residents enjoyed, but the most popular was definitely the Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut bar, so it was a good job Gemma brought a large bar to share!
🍫🍫🍫🍫

08/01/2026

31/12/2025

Lake View Christmas Party.
What can we say about our fabulous festive party? We had a fantastic time full of smiles, songs and lots of fun and games.
Snowman snowball throw was a favourite, the carol singalongs sent waves through the house, the buffet was devoured.

We had some tricky questions on our Christmas quiz, the food picture quiz had us all feeling hungry and the pure joy seeing and spending time with our family and friends was beautiful.
A great time had by all.

30/12/2025

We have been very lucky to receive a vast amount of chocolates from our friends & families, which were gratefully received and shared around the home.
We then decided we will do our part to support Macmillan by saving our tubs to be recycled with the Tubs2Pubs initiative run by Greene King.
Jack's kindly seen off the last couple of choccies in another tub to add to our collection!

If you have any Tubs at home you have finished please drop them into us here at Lake View, we will then take them all together to our nearest collection point.

24/12/2025

24/12/2025

We here at Lake View had a wonderful discussion about what Christmas means to us and wondered how many people may be feeling alone over the festive period, we teamed up with our closest home ‘Beechmount’ and surprised them with a visit with 3 of Lake View’s ladies, to deliver some hand made cards written by our amazing residents to theirs… the conversations were flowing, the cheer and pure delight to hand them out and from those that received them was a truly heartwarming moment.
We felt so welcome with their open arms and made some great new friendships and of course it was a great road trip (poor taxi driver couldn’t get a word in)
Thank you Beechmount for having us and we hope you all enjoyed the cards, here’s to wishing each and everyone a merry Christmas!

20/12/2025

This morning we spent time decorating our walkers with Christmas decorations, making each one unique to our own personalities.
Behind door no17 on our advent today was a Christmas tree and Anne was very pleased it was white chocolate.