Activities at South Chowdene Care Home

Staff and residents at South Chowdene Care home in Low Fell held a charity coffee morning on Friday 25th September to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Having a Coffee Morning is the perfect chance to catch up over a cuppa and a slice of something delicious for a great cause. In 2019, an incredible £27.5 million was raised and Macmillan are aiming to top that this year. The money raised at your Coffee Morning will help everyone with cancer to live life as fully as they can.

This year, as with most things, it was a little different. South Chowdene Care Home hosted a virtual coffee morning with well socially distanced participants coming together to raise funds.

As schools went back and as various sports have restarted in various forms, South Chowdene decided it was time to have a ‘Sports Afternoon’ linking in with the British Athletics Championships.

We threw ‘Shots’ at targets, ‘Long jumped’ with beanbags and tested our ‘Shooting’ accuracy getting hoops over cones. There were many excellent scores but more to the point many residents wanting another go to better their score. Apart from achieving the highest score in ‘Long jump’, Edna managed a most magic shot at the cans taking out the middle can ‘bulls eye’ but managing to leave the others standing!

Fish and Chip day fell on 4th Sept this year and since we’ve missed our trips to the beach, we brought the beach to South Chowdene in order to feel the sand on our feet and to have a paddle.

Residents chose between beach Egg and tomato sandwiches and traditional Fish and chips for lunch followed by a 99 ice cream before ‘going to the beach’ to feel the sand through their toes and having a paddle in the sea.

There was much discussion about which seaside resort was the best and how exciting they all were for various reasons. In this area, Cullercoats definitely came out on top.

Residents at South Chowdene got into the Notting Hill Carnival virtual spirit this year.  All things Caribbean were celebrated – food, drink, music, dance and ‘Queen’ Competition.  Celebrations were kick-started with Residents making their own maracas in a craft session and decorating the dining room and lounges whilst wearing ‘Lei’ garlands.

Residents also enjoyed mouth-watering Mocktails (enjoying the smells and textures of citrus and soft fruits) whilst the homes hospitality team made delicious jerk chicken with rice and peas as well as curried mutton with pepper salsa and sweet potato roasties, followed by banana fritters.  Afterwards rest dances, sung-a-long and shakes those maracas along to steel band music and watching footage from previous Carnivals in many and various settings. Residents marvelled at the Queen competitions and loved both colours and sounds.

The annual Bristol Balloon Fiesta didn’t happen this year due to the pandemic.  For Residents of South Chowdene they still had fun making their own hot air balloons, finding out some amazing facts about hot air balloons, ballooning and various very daring feats. They also watched footage of balloons preparing for flight and the spectacle as they all float around the sky in a myriad of colours and marvelled at the more novel shapes and designs of some balloons.

We celebrated this event with a quick look around the county and visited some of its main attractions. This sparked many memories and much discussion and quite a debate as to whether the Yorkshire coast/ market towns or Moors were the best bit. We also had to have a Yorkshire pudding or two and sampled some Wensleydale cheese.