Activities at Cookridge Court Care Home

At Cookridge Court we love celebrating Halloween with a party here at the home. Unfortunately this year, we cannot host our Annual Halloween party so have decided to bring Halloween to you virtually.

We would like as many children & adults as possible to send in their spookiest Halloween best carved pumpkins and send us their photos for residents and staff to judge the winners. We will be holding a small Halloween themed afternoon for our residents to enjoy viewing your entries and choosing the best!

Photos or emails with the name and age should be emailed to cookridgecourt.activities@barchester.com by Monday 2nd November 2020.

Group judging by staff and residents at Cookridge Court Care Home will take place on, Monday 2nd November 2020 with a slideshow of all entries on our projector and voters will fill out slips to select their winners.

Taste buds have been tingling with this month’s French Cuisine themed night! Delicious meals are an important part of the day and to jazz things up, we have being hosting monthly ‘World Cuisine Night’.    At Cookridge Court have teamed up as a whole home approach to go above and beyond to create a fun, memorable and stimulating activity for our residents that was available to all. 

The homes hospitality team, recently with a divisional ‘chef of the year’ winner, the chefs whipped up a mouth-watering feast with a choice of different French dishes from coq au vin &  beef bourguignon to warm camembert with a French baguette and pain au chocolate for deserts. Accompaniments all washed down with a French white and red wine, French beer or something less alcoholic!

The staff and residents at Cookridge Court Care home have been having cookery sessions from our Divisional chef of the year winner, Sinead Ruddock in making and designing delicious homemade pizza’s. Sinead recently won Divisional chef of the year and with the help of the activity team we felt we needed to put Sinead’s excellent cookery skills to use by hosting Cookery sessions with our resident’s.

The session proved to be a real hit with residents who enjoyed a fun-filled afternoon with a competition of the best designed pizza between the residents.

One Resident said: “I really enjoyed attending the cookery session. I am always up for trying new things. Cooking wasn’t something I enjoyed growing up but I thoroughly had fun attending this one.” Sinead Ruddock (Head Chef) “It was lovely to work with the activity team and deliver a cookery session. I myself thoroughly enjoyed spending some individual time with the residents and listening to their stories about recipes they used to cook for their families.”

Taste buds have been tingling with this month’s Italian Cuisine themed night! Delicious meals are an important part of the day and to jazz things up, residents decided they would like to host a monthly ‘World Cuisine Night’.  Due to the ongoing pandemic Residents are unable to venture out into the community to experience these different cuisines – so the team have brought Italy to Cookridge!

 At Cookridge Court have teamed up as a whole home approach to go above and beyond to create a fun, memorable and stimulating activity for our residents that was available to all.  The evening was a tremendous success and it was a delight to see the smiles on the Residents faces.

The homes hospitality team whipped up a mouth-watering feast with a choice of different Italian dishes from pizza & pasta to Meatballs &  Bruschetta and accompaniments all washed down with Prosecco, Italian beer or something less alcoholic!

Italian World Cuisine night went down a treat and we’re looking forward to our resident meeting to see what everyone decides to put on the menu for next month!

Throughout the pandemic Cookridge Court have been wanting to keep strong relationships with local clubs out in the community. OPAL is a local community club close to Cookridge Court who very kindly invited the home to join their weekly coffee afternoon held each Friday and consists of various virtual activities that the residents and team can really engage in.

The residents have enjoyed engaging in an A to Z holiday reminisce session of different places around the world. Some of the homes residents had visited these places and were able to reminisce and speak about their experiences too. This was all done through Zoom and we cannot wait for our next session! 

As it was National fish & chip day, the activity team worked with the homes hospitality team to create the taste of real fish shop fish & chips. Instead of serving the fish & chips from the hot trolley’s they were pre-wrapped them so the residents who chose to have fish & chips could unwrap them to eat, which really created that realistic fish shop take out, throughout our lunchtime service.  

It was a different experience leading Residents to reminisce throughout the afternoon of fun times as families when they used to go out to the seaside.

Activity Coordinator, Laura Marshall said “I wanted to create the realistic feeling for our residents and it was lovely to see their faces while they were unwrapping them at lunchtime”, with Resident Joan saying “It was brilliant to have our fish & chips out of the fish shop paper. Even though they were homemade by our chef it really made them taste like the real, proper fish & chips”.