Activities at Cheshire Grange Care Home

We had a lovely time joining Henry Slator for an exciting virtual event to discuss his book ‘Conversations at the Pond’.

Henry had an unusual writing journey, which many of our residents found inspiring, he underwent chemotherapy in early 2020, which allowed him to rediscover his light-hearted outlook on life by imagining conversations with creatures in and around his large garden pond and adding buckets of fun.

The entertaining Conversations at the Pond, with its mass of colourful illustrations, took our residents along his journey, they felt inspired, cheered and loved hearing all about Henry’s experiences.

We sometimes forget, with all the interactive activities we plan and have available throughout a normal week, how important it is to give the residents space to just relax and fill their time with nothing but a comfy chair and a beautiful view and of course the obligatory cuppa and cake!

Having recently discovered our residents artistic talents we marked Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday with a celebration of his work. We looked at some of his famous paintings, including ‘Starry Night’, ‘Chair’ and ‘Sunflowers In A Vase’ we then printed outlines of the paintings for our residents to recreate with their own interpretation. This activity is proving very popular with residents Memory Lane and the results are quite fantastic, it won’t be long before we are opening our very own art gallery.

We had a fun filled week leading up to Easter, with lots of arts & crafts and Easter themed games. Residents decorated traditional Easter bonnets & decorated eggs whilst chatting about their memories of Easter as a child themselves and things they did with their children and grandchildren and how things had changed. There was much laughter playing Bunny Hoopla & Pin the Tail on The Bunny.

Whilst there was lots of frivolity surrounding the event we also remembered why we celebrated Easter and welcomed in the ladies & gents of St Marys Church to conduct an Easter Communion Service.

On the day the hospitality team served up a beautiful Easter Sunday dinner of delicious roast lamb with all the trimmings and the Easter Bunny did visit, but unfortunately had not signed the consent forms for their photo to be used!!!

Our residents came together to enjoy an exciting virtual talk courtesy of the team at National Trust Talks Service.  The illustrated talk took us closer to one of Cliveden’s most famous families, the Astors. Our residents were able to discover what motivated William Waldorf Astor, America’s richest man, to purchase Cliveden in 1893 and how the estate became the centre of high society in the 1920 s and 30 s thanks to his son Waldorf and daughter in law Nancy Astor.

The Astors time at Cliveden came to an end in the 1960 s after the estate became infamously associated with Profumo Affair, but the house and garden continue to reflect their innovations and passions.  We all had a brilliant time.

We had a lovely time joining Holly and Marie-Therese from the Wallace Collection, for a virtual introduction to the Collection, followed by a sensory exploratory walk through one of the museum’s most famous landscape paintings.  The Collection ranges from Old Master paintings to 18th century French furniture, arms and armour.  We all had a wonderful time and cannot wait to put our creative skills to a test and paint some landscapes in the upcoming days.