Activities at South Chowdene Care Home

Residents at South Chowdene Care Home in Low Fell marked International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8th wearing purple and celebrating the achievements of wonderful trail-blazing women throughout history.

Residents took part in discussions about the role of the many different women who have shaped history from Cleopatra and Boudica to Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie right through to the Queen and Mrs Thatcher.  They talked about the important women in their own lives and celebrated the achievements of their fellow residents.  They also attended a live streaming event organised by Historic Environments Scotland to discuss the role of women in the Scottish Wars of Independence.

Residents at South Chowdene have kept busy during lockdown with the help of ‘Art Diamonds’ a Gateshead Community Art group. We have joined in various ventures and kept up with what others are doing through the ‘Art Diamonds’ newsletter.

Recently, we took part in the ‘Heart for Art A-Z’ which is also part of the Equal Arts ‘A-Z of ageing well’. The South Chowdene letter was ‘B for Books’ in which Evelyn Wright and Peggy Montague spoke about what books have meant to them over the years.

The short video we made was put together with other short videos to complete the alphabet and the residents of South Chowdene have been very moved to see the other letters (promoting reminiscence) and to feel that they have been part of a much bigger picture throughout lockdown. We are looking forward to all the new exciting ideas from ‘Art Diamonds’ in future.

At the end of January, we celebrated Greta’s 90th birthday! The conservatory was decorated with balloons and a lovely 90th picture made up of small pictures of her family. Greta also had a fantastic birthday cake which really captured the essence of who she is and what she enjoys.

The first week in February saw 3 birthdays all celebrated with one big party during which we played virtual ‘Pass the parcel’ and relived traditional fair games with hoop throwing (there were some fantastic scores) and ‘Coconut Shy’ (during which residents really did find some strength and cans were flying everywhere).

Residents had a great day on the 14th, chatting about funny stories around their relationships including how they met, things they should and shouldn’t have said and done and general relationship ‘faux-pas’. We also played our favourite game discussing which items on the ‘Bingo cards’ we either received or gave as Valentines gifts.

This was a real favourite to celebrate at South Chowdene. Residents made Vanilla and Almond truffles during the morning which were chilled over lunchtime. After lunch, we enjoyed a quiz and shared some fun facts about chocolate and watched a short video about how chocolate was discovered and how it has got to us in the form we know and now love. After this, we sampled the truffles as well as some very interesting flavours of chocolate. The Mint chocolate was the outright winner closely followed by the Raspberry chocolate as a firm favourite.

Residents dug into their memories to complete crosswords and flower recognition challenges during the morning and then came together in the afternoon to check their answers and take part in a flower related quiz which took us into the world of Greek Mythology, the Freemasons, Shakespeare and down many other surprising avenues. Residents had a great time learning from the questions and answers they didn’t know before and have some areas they still want to look into and find out more about so we will be having another ‘flower learning session’ very soon.