Staff and residents all very much enjoyed a slightly spookier October this year.
One of our new residents to the home asked what we did here at Mary Rose to celebrate Halloween. It has not been a very popular theme previous years, but we asked the opinions of our residents, and it soon became clear – we had a Halloween to plan!
Asking our residents what Halloween meant to them, we were able to organise various suitable, fun, and inclusive activities.
The gentleman who first suggested Halloween went shopping for us and picked up fantastic decorations, sweets, and gimmicks. Added to staff contributions, there were soon cobwebs, a spooky forest, orange and black balloons and Halloween props decorating our main communal lounge. Ghost lights draped our plants and pictures to add a spookier feel as it gets darker!!
Our craft focused residents didn’t let us down and set to work using various materials to complete fabulous Halloween themed pictures.
Another group enjoyed a very tasty biscuits decorating afternoon. With Tea and company, we spent a lovely morning in the quiet lounge flexing our creative muscles and then enjoyed eating our sweet designs. Using pre-filled icing tubes and edible decorations with a Halloween Twist, fun was had by all.
We enjoyed a pumpkin carving session, where residents giggled at staff attempts to carve their chosen face design into the large vegetable! One resident really tested our creative skills by requesting ‘PFC’ on his – as a tribute to his favourite football club! By ensuring the activity was food safe and that hygiene guidelines were strictly adhered to, we were able to provide the kitchen with the spoils.
Our Fantastic chef created an amazing pumpkin soup for the whole home to enjoy, which proved to be very popular! Several residents hadn’t tried it before and loved their seasonal warmer, while others had more than one serving as it was THAT good
The pumpkins were dotted around the home, with battery operated tealights for a safe, authentic atmosphere and some made great display additions to our Halloween Trolley, which enjoyed a couple of outings over the month. Donned with spooky props galore, our trolley, (along with its Halloween themed music playlist) traveled the home and ensured that anyone who couldn’t visit us for Halloween – Halloween came to them.
One of the items our ‘Halloween Helper’ picked up for us was a fantastic spin on ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’.
‘Pin the Scar on the Frankie’ came with an elasticated blindfold to ensure players couldn’t see where they were aiming, and easily removable scar sticker to place on the cartoon Frankenstein!
With a little staff assistance, a fun afternoon was had as we laughed at each others attempts. We adapted the game slightly as we would try to give simple guiding instructions to the player to see how close they could get to the target.
We have received very positive feed back for our 1st Mary Rose Halloween – with ideas and suggestions already being made for next year!
