Activities at South Chowdene Care Home

We started the month with the Autumn Fair and as ever, it was a great afternoon with lots of visitors to the many stalls on site selling beautiful homemade craft items. Visitors and residents sang and danced along to Dave Brewis and enjoyed some well-deserved refreshments. The raffle and tombola raised a good amount of money for the residents’ fund and the Brik a Brac stall raised £30 for RNIB. At the end of the month we held our Macmillan coffee event where residents enjoyed spending time with friends and relatives, and members of the local community.  Staff at the care home and their children had baked lots of lovely cakes, biscuits and pastries for everyone to sample and for guests to buy to take home.  Some residents had baked cakes and biscuits for the occasion too. Everyone was spoilt for choice!

South Chowdene helped celebrate Mexican Independence day making Sangria to wash down the delicious Chilli con Carne and Arroz con Leche made by our talented chef Donna. Janice kept us right with the recipe and Geof was happy to taste test along the way. After this we donned he Sombreros and found out about Mexican Independence and the country itself. We had a go at the Mexican Hat Dance before a quick fire quiz, after which we had some well-deserved Tortillas with dips.

We usually go to the Library for talks, craft sessions, coffee morning, but this time, the library came to us armed with pictures of Gateshead in days gone by. There was much discussion about these and memories came flooding out especially around the shops on the high street be it due to having worked there or spent a lot of money there. There were even programmes from a few of the cinemas in the area – and they brought out a fair few tales too! The session finished with a fantastic Musical Bingo with a lot of singing along. Thank you very much to Karen, Michael and Jen.

Staff, residents, relatives and the local community came together at South Chowdene Care Home to enjoy an Autumn Fete that was held in the home’s grounds on Sunday 3rd September.

South Chowdene Care Home hosted a variety of activities throughout the day, including Raffle, tombola, craft and gift stalls as well as live entertainment from Dave Brewis, which were enjoyed by everyone who came to the event.

South Chowdene residents were hooked on the Women’s Football World Cup from the off with each residents picking a team at random and having their team flag on their bedroom door until they were knocked out. Various matches were quite heated with friends facing each other and hoping to come out on top. As teams disappeared off doors and the final 16 were whittled down, residents kept an eye on the ‘Match board’ as well as the ‘form’ of teams moving through. England games saw a lot of flag waving and residents learnt a ‘Pom dance’ to perform before England matches. Despite the huge opposition, Pat was crowned the Queen of Football and received a personal cake as a prize

Residents spent ‘Cat day’ reminiscing about the pet cats which have passed through their lives, having a laugh at cat antics and chatting about ‘working’ cats encountered in the farmyards during evacuation during WW2. We also had a quiz to check our knowledge of cats and lesser known cat breeds, followed by a visit from ‘Delilah’ and ‘Onyx’ – Sphynx cats who kept us on our toes playing ‘hide and seek’. We adored having a play with them and feeling how warm they are despite not having the usual cat fur.