Activities at Cheshire Grange Care Home

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.

Since ‘lock down’ a lot of focus has been put on maintaining contact with loved ones who can no longer visit, and now that local restrictions are once more in place and we’ve had to suspend garden visits, this has become more important than ever, especially with new residents coming into the home.

These calls are a big part of the daily routine now, but have given our ladies and gents lots of individual attention and we have learnt so much from this special time and family conversation, we’ve all wept tears of sadness and laughed with tears of joy. Residents have got to grips with WhatsApp calls, Portals, FaceTime and a KOMP.

We’ve sent photos & videos via email and text and WhatsApp, shared special occasions birthdays and Wedding Anniversaries using modern technology,  we’ve sent Miss You Hearts out to all our families along with postcards and letters, keeping in touch and saying I Love You has almost become our home moto.

Reminiscence is very important for everyone here at Cheshire Grange, it helps the care staff to learn about the residents and gives the residents triggers to their past. We have enjoyed sharing holiday and pet photos on our Memory Lane Communities this month and have had lots of interesting conversations after residents have been looking at our photo frames.

At Cheshire Grange we love our dogs and are missing their visits during lockdown, so we hosted our very own virtual dog show for residents, family, and friends in the local community to share their furry friends with us all.

Dogs have fun loveable quirks, tricks and general gorgeousness. So, we organised our first ever virtual dog show at Cheshire Grange where we received over 30 entries which residents voted for those which were there favourites in five categories.

The dogs humans sent us photos of their lovable furry friends with a little bit of information so we learnt something about each dog, these little stories raised many a smile alongside the gorgeous photos.

We had a 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each category from Prettiest Pooch, Handsomest Hound, Playful Pup Sleeping Beauty and Best Furry Friend, all the winners had a photoshoot with their certificates, rosettes and prizes and it’s fair to say that if we’d have had a Best In Show winner it would have been Rolo the Chow Chow, who won the residents hearts along with being quite a local celebrity.