Activities at Cheshire Grange Care Home

January is a dark miserable month at the best of times so we thought it would be a great idea to fill our home with flowers, which also tied into International Flower Day. We sent out a message to our families asking if they could  send us messages of love for the residents and also for the staff too.

We got some marvellous heart-warming responses which we made into flowers, residents were given their own to hang in their rooms and we made a second one to decorate the home along with flower painted pebbles from our friends at Lymm Rocks, this really has given everyone something to smile about.

Residents helped to put together some ‘Cups of Kindness’ for the elderly in the local community. Treats including a pretty handkerchief, sachets of hot chocolate, cappuccino and latte coffee along with chocolate pennies and posh choccies were put in a pretty mug, gift wrapped and tied with a special Christmas Heart.

The mugs were given to ‘Leave No One Behind’ in Lymm, a local group set up to support the vulnerable during the pandemic, who distributed them to local residents.

We love getting gifts, and we’ve been so grateful over the past months for the thoughtfulness and time people have from the local community, so we were delighted to have a bag arrive full with some beautifully knitted twiddle muffs, from Lymm Jubilee WI. The time that has gone into knitting these show how much these ladies care about their craft and our residents, they are bright cheerful and have been welcomed by so many.

Residents at Cheshire Grange Care Home, in Lymm recently joined forces with All Saints Church in Thelwall, to pack boxes for The Samaritans Purse Operation Christmas Child Appeal. A request was sent out to our families and friends and the local community via social media for donations to fill the shoe boxes, residents enjoyed several afternoons deciding if a box was for a little boy or girl and then selecting the items to pack, ranging from colouring books & pens to knitted puppets and from bars of soap and toothbrushes to dolls and cars.

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.