Care homes celebrate Halloween by having fang-tastic fun

x98kbq4 Residents and colleagues embraced the Halloween spirit with a number of creative creep-tacular fun activities to mark the occasion, including carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns; parties; dressing up in Halloween costumes; apple bobbing; enjoying bewitching cakes and magical food; telling scary stories; sharing happy memories recalling the fun they had as children at Halloween; playing games, quizzes as well as watching horror films.

At HC-One’s Branston Court Care Home in Burton-On-Trent, Staffordshire, residents took part in a fun pumpkin carving session to mark Halloween celebrations. Residents enjoyed carving the pumpkins into spooky jack-o'-lantern faces.

Residents decorated the pumpkins with paint, stickers and other materials to create the spooktacular masterpieces which were proudly put on display outside and inside the care home for visitors to admire.

Wellbeing Coordinator at HC-One’s Branston Court Care Home, Zoe Douglas, who organised the activity, said:

“Residents thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the pumpkin carving activity to create their own jack-o’-lanterns.”

Home Manager at HC-One’s Branston Court Care Home, Ruth Thomson, commented:

“Everyone at Branston Court Care Home loves celebrating Halloween, and the residents really enjoy getting involved with the pumpkin carving activity.

“The results were very impressive and were proudly put on display around the home to set the scene for a spooktacular evening on October 31st!”

At HC-One’s Hollymere House Care Home in Haslington, Crewe in Cheshire, residents received a magical visit from Vicky Thornton, a Musical Therapist at Musical Moments who aim to bring joy, happiness and social inclusion. The sessions provide stimulating and interactive musical activity sessions for residents.

This month’s Musical Moments session was based around Halloween, and residents got dressed up to mark the occasion. The session included live Halloween music, exercise routines and movement to music, interactive music activities with sensory props as well as the opportunity for residents to sing and perform with instruments and reminisce to music.

Alison Brown, Home Manager at HC-One’s Hollymere House Care Home, stated:

“Thank you to Vicky for bringing fun and laughter to Hollymere House this Halloween for residents to participate in. Residents thoroughly enjoyed the Halloween Musical Moments session which involved interactive music, singing and movement.”

HC-One’s Hollymere House Care Home residents went on to spend three days carving and producing jack o’ lantern pumpkins for the regional competition. Children from Kids Planet also came to visit residents dressed in a variety of Halloween costumes to provide residents with inspirations, ideas and encouragement.

At HC-One’s Clarendon Hall Care Home in Humberston, Grimsby, residents took part in a Halloween themed arts and crafts session to create some stain glass window spiders to decorate and display in the windows of the home. Residents selected their chosen spider stencils that were cut out of black cardboard and chose from a range of coloured plastic materials to add eye catching details to the spider.

Once created, residents proudly put their spiders on display in the windows of the care home so that when the sun shines through the windows, the spiders let in the sunlight.

Nicola Walker, Home Manager at HC-One’s Clarendon Hall Care Home, said:

“The arts and crafts activity brought colleagues, residents and relatives together to create some amazing Halloween art pieces to decorate the home with. Everyone had such a great time.

“Halloween is a popular celebration and many of our residents reminisced and excitedly told stories of what they used to do at Halloween when they were younger.”