Activities at South Chowdene Care Home

Eva was joined by staff, relatives, friends and other residents as she celebrated her landmark birthday. An afternoon of Elvis with Mike Memphis was held at the home and guests enjoyed a special birthday cake made by the home’s chef, Lynne Parkin.  Eva was also interviewed by Affinity Radio – a first for her!  There is always something new to experience, even at 103!

Eva took an active part in the war and worked her way up the ladder to management at the factory where she worked. She loved going out in the car and riding around the beautiful English countryside with her husband and was lucky to travel the world with him through his job before coming to South Chowdene Care Home, where she is enjoying a new chapter of her life.
 

Book at bedtime’ was the theme of the day at South Chowdene where bookworm residents welcomed Year 5 from Larkspur Community Primary School to read to them and get involved in World Book Day.

Staff and residents at South Chowdene Care Home decided to have a Pyjama day and chatted about their memories of listening to books at bedtime themselves. Each resident had a couple of pupils read a book to them before finding out about children’s literature nowadays and some of the favourite authors around, as well as chatting about life and learning to read at Primary School now. 
 

The staff and residents at South Chowdene have been mixing up batter and flipping pancakes all morning in preparation for their annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Day celebrations.

South Chowdene has marked this year’s Pancake Day with a Pancake Day Quiz, virtual races and a very intense Pancake flipping competition and of course, lots of pancakes! Lynne Parkin, head chef at the home, worked wonders with every resident receiving a chocolate pancake as voted for by resident poll. 
 

South Chowdene was filled with flowers, cards and sweets in celebration of St Valentine’s Day.  

Staff and residents celebrated the day of love by joining with Art Diamonds to make Lego red roses to place in vases they had decorated themselves and personalised for their family members. A heart-shaped decoration was created out of fully recycled materials and there was a fantastic party with live entertainment from Gilly singing and dancing along to decorating the home and gifting each other home-made sweets, cakes and treats.  
 

We were incredibly happy to welcome Year 6 from Larkspur Community Primary School to read to us and discuss favourite books. Residents were keen to find out what sort of thing young people are now reading, and some residents brought their beautifully bound and sometimes signed books to show the youngsters.

There was a lot of discussion about life at school now compared with life at school for our residents – some of whom were evacuated for quite a bit of their school time and sometimes couldn’t get to school.
It was also a great opportunity to get to know penpals who we have been writing to for a while now but haven’t actually met in person.

Residents from South Chowdene joined other community members at The Soundrooms in Gateshead for a Valentines Tea dance. It was great to see people we knew from previous Tea Dances but also to meet new groups and find out about them.

We were treated to a delicious full Afternoon Tea with endless cups of tea which were much needed  as we sang along to Jay with his fine selection of love songs. There was a little time for some dancing before settling down to watch Calamity Jane.

We left The Soundrooms feeling thoroughly relaxed and having had a lovely social reminiscence of previous times.