Activities at Cheshire Grange Care Home

We introduced our residents on Memory Lane to the art of marbling, dropping paint onto a bath of water and then picking it up with a sheet of paper. The residents enjoyed watching the swirling patterns take shape and then seeing the finished result. We will be using the prints made for some of our Christmas art projects.

November saw two celebrations from different cultures with are both usually celebrated with fireworks and for very different reasons!

Guy Fawkes Night was a quiet affair as many residents preferred not to have fireworks as they thought it unkind to pets, we respected this and instead we watched a previously recorded display from Edinburgh whilst talking about the history of The Gunpowder Plot and reminiscing about how they celebrated the day with when they were younger and then enjoying a specially prepared meal by the homes hospitality team.

We then had an Indian day celebrating Diwali, the residents made lanterns which decorated the dining tables, the activities team dressed up and we had a video tour of The Taj Mahal before enjoying an Indian Feast, several of our residents had memories of living in India to travelling to the area and were very happy to share their experiences.

Remembrance Sunday is always a special day on the Cheshire Grange calendar, where we normally invite standard bearers and a bugler form The Thelwall British Legion to take the service for us, but this year due to Covid 19 restrictions it had to be somewhat different. As always we took in to consideration the residents views, many not wishing to talk in any great detail about that time in history, not wanting to remember the tragedy it brought, but wanting to pay their respects. We created a display in the lounge area with knitted poppies donated by a local art group for which staff gave donations to The Royal British Legion, we also supported the group by placing a Virtual memorial in The 2020 Field of Remembrance, residents helped by making tissue paper poppies which were placed around the home.

On the day small groups from all communities gathered in the lounges to watch the service from the Cenotaph followed by Songs Of Praise, those who chose to stay in the rooms watched on their own TVs.  In the afternoon all residents who wished to, got the opportunity to watch a specially made Remembrance Day Musical DVD made by one of our favourite singer Deborah who was a regular visitor before lockdown restriction.

We spent a week in October celebrating Harvest Festival, we had craft sessions decorating pumpkins, poetry afternoons where we made our leaf fall poem, we also made salt dough ‘bread’ and a wheatsheaf. Alexa helped us out during these sessions playing harvest song requests, the most popular being Morning Has Broken , We Plough The Fields & Scatter and All Things Bright & Beautiful.

We involved  families by asking them to send us harvest related words in to put on our tumbling apples and connected to our local community being having a collection for the food bank. All this industry was put together in a bright colourful display for all to enjoy. The part of the week residents enjoyed best though, was the chatting and reminiscing about their memories of harvest time, as children themselves and with their children.

It was rainy and miserable outdoors so out came the cards & dominoes. We soon discovered that rules were very flexible and that most residents when playing with their families had made up a lot of their own rules. We all admired our ‘domino’ snake, which might not have been totally numerically sequenced, but we were strict when it came to Snap and this saw one of our gentle not win a trick, but we reassured him with the old adage ‘unlucky at card, lucky in love’ ….to which he declared, with a wry grin ‘ well I’ll take that!

Residents at Cheshire Grange Care Home, Lymm have taken part in a virtual Trans Pennie Walk, to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society.

Over a period of 2 weeks, when weather permitted residents and staff walked laps around the homes meadow path, with the distance walked mapped on the Trans Pennie route, starting from Heatley the total distance walked of just over 9 miles, took the Cheshire Grange team to Penketh whilst raising funds for the Alzheimer’s Society.

Jo Eland, Activities Coordinator said ‘”This has been a very interactive challenge for residents and staff, as the trail runs past our door and some residents were familiar with it, it also triggered many interesting conversations about the various local landmarks we reached. It was a lot of fun and good exercise involving as many of our ladies and gents as possible as well as supporting a very worthy cause.