Activities at Cookridge Court Care Home

We had an amazing time celebrating Easter this year by enjoying an eggs-tensive range of activities, from bonnet making, decorating eggs and then relishing in an Easter tea party accompanied by a tipple or two! Residents also tucked in to their delicious Easter nests which they’d spent the afternoon baking themselves. 

As always, we’ve all been looking forward to Easter. It’s such a nice time of the year – the residents love all the colourful Easter eggs and getting creative with their bonnet making. Now more than ever we need to keep spirits high and it really was an eggs-cellent day!

At Cookridge Court, we’re helping to tackle any feelings of isolation during this difficult time. Our teams are helping our residents use iPads, Skype, Facebook and facetime as a way to reach out to families, friends and loved ones.

This has been heart-warming for our residents, bringing smiles and a sense of comfort to them, knowing their families are safe and well. We wanted to make it even more special for the resident’s families and have been emailing photographs with personal messages from each resident to their loved ones. Keeping spirits high is even more important than usual at the moment and our residents’ thoroughly enjoyed working with our activities team to come up with their messages

Taking a trip down memory lane is a great way to help our residents open up and reminisce about happy times. One of our residents, Jean, used to love trips out to Golden Acre Park with her family and so we took advantage of a sunny day and off to Golden Acre Park we went!

We helped Jean and some of her friends here at our home on to the minibus and enjoyed a drive out to the park with a little stop off at the café for some tea and cake. It was lovely to see everybody chatting together about fond memories and all the changes within the park since their first visits.

Outings such as these are very important for everyone who lives here so we’re very lucky to have lots of wonderful places to visit in our surrounding area and look forward to our next trip!

At Cookridge Court we enjoy a valuable friendship with our local golf club. Our residents benefit in lots of ways from this relationship, one of which being the fun indoor golfing sessions the club provides to us here at our home!

So many of our residents who have enjoyed golf in the past are now unfortunately unable to go out on to a course. With the help of the brilliant members of Cookridge Hall Golf Club and their adapted game, these residents are now thrilled to be able to swing a club and join in with chipping and putting once again.

We’re passionate about creating a vibrant and stimulating environment for our residents and so run these golfing sessions fortnightly. We’ve seen such an improvement in people’s physical abilities, bonds and confidences being built through encouraging and cheering each other on and so many more magical moments. Thanks so much to Cookridge Hall for this wonderful opportunity.

At Cookridge Court, enabling residents to lead fulfilled lives is paramount and it’s so important for us all to know what that looks like to each person living here which is why everybody here takes the time to get to know each of our residents individually. This really helps us to tailor activities and entertainment to suit.

Theresa, one of our residents, always chats to us about her love of horses and donkeys. Our activities team found out that Theresa was longing to see all the animals that live at the nearby ‘Hope Pastures’ which is our local horse, pony and donkey sanctuary. We managed to arrange a date to visit but Theresa became very anxious and apprehensive about leaving our home. Our activities team could see that Theresa was too uncomfortable to be able to enjoy her visit and so changed tactic and they went above and beyond to organise Hope Pastures coming here to Cookridge Court!

Theresa was over the moon and on the day they arrived, the sun was shining and our residents were able to have a seat under the parasols and enjoy the pony outdoors and up close.

Theresa was able to spend time feeding, stroking and talking to the pony and formed a really lovely bond with him. Theresa then led him around to each individual so everybody got some time to pet and interact, even our residents choosing to stay indoors and also our residents in their beds. This made it a really special day for everyone. Laura, our activities coordinator asked Theresa what the day meant to her and Theresa said, “It brings back happy memories for me and makes me feel brilliant inside”.

Many thanks to Hope Pastures for helping us to make our much loved resident’s wish come true!