We offer quality learning experiences for children.
We offer quality learning experiences for children.
We have a well established partnership with our neighbours at Frances Bolitho Care Home. Our ‘Intergenerational Care Partnership’ has created a unique and wonderful reltionship between the children here at nursery and the residents at the care home. The children visit the residents weekly and share arts and crafts, gardening, singing and story time together. It has been a joy to see these relationships blossom between the youngest and oldest generations in our care. We are very fortunate to be jointly owned by Cornwallis Care Services ltd and to share the same beautiful grounds, which has enabled this partnership to evolve.
Our children regularly visit the residents at Frances Bolitho Care Home, this is the beating heart of our partnership. These visits are small groups so that the children and residents can build relationships and spend quality time together, creating lasting memories and moments of joy within each day.
Ellie is one of our Senior Nursery Practitioners she is our Intergenerational Care Partnership Lead. Ellie is joined by Heather who is our Intergenerational Care Partnership – Supporting Lead. Ellie and Heather work together to create a variety of imaginative and engaging activities for the nursery children and care home residents to explore and enjoy together. Their focus is always on participation and engagement between the children and residents, so they are continually building relationships through their play together. Ellie and Heather have developed their own relationships with the residents and put a real emphasis on the interests of the residents when creating activities, such as choosing giant story books and story baskets to share with a resident who has taken a shine to reading stories with the children, they have taken over a record player for a resident who lights up with music and singing, and they have arranged a nature walk for a resident who loves to enjoy the fresh air and beautiful grounds.
All of the children love visiting the care home, we split them into groups so that each 6 weeks the same children visit each session which supports relationships and confidence to grow. The children are awlays very excited to take activities over to see the residents and also excited to see if the residents and staff have set up anything for them such as an Egg-citing Easter Egg Hunt or arts and crafts!
Our nursery staff and the care staff are already sparking ideas off each other to create some exciting and very memorable experiences for the residents and children. Some of the activities already planned include:
Gardening Together; including a sunflower growing competition!
Arts and Crafts Activities; exploring paint, glitter, collaging, making cards and crowns.
Sensory Activities; Exploring the textures, sights and smells of activities such as play-dough, gloop and much more together!
Music and Movement; we all love a good boogie and what better way to brighten the residents day than for them to enjoy the enthusiastic (and often very loud!) singing from our children! Plus our children have been learning some super yoga moves that they want to share with the residents.
Physical Activities and Turn Taking Games; small group activities such as passing a balloon to each other, throwing bean bags at targets, rolling balls to each other, playing hoopla and much more!
Sharing books, stories, poems and rhymes together; whats your favourite rhyme? Is it the same as your parents or grandparents? Do you remember a song or rhyme they always used to sing to you or tell you? We are going to be sharing our favourites together and we are looking forward to learning some childhood rhymes from the residents and sharing some of our new songs with them too!
The children created a ball table game to play with the residents, it sparks lots of laughter and teamwork together!
The children and residents both enjoy exploring the dolls together, pretending to feed them, care for them and sing to them together.
One of our nursery staff, Heather, bought in a record player for the children and residents to enjoy together. Our nursery children really love 40’s and 50’s music! They have shared their super dance moves with the residents, dancing along to records on the record player.
Sharing stories create the most magical moments of calm and connection between the children and residents.
Balloon games have been our longstanding ice breaker at the start of each session. This is a moment of fun and laughter when the children and residents first meet each other to start their time together off with a bang! This is a really memorable moment of play that may act as a memory trigger for children and residents to remember what is about to happen each week.
We explore a wide range of arts and crafts activities with the residents. The children also make cards and pictures to take over to the residents for special occasions.
We love exploring playdough, especially when the children add colour and scents to the dough to explore further.
There have been a few pioneering partnerships like this over the recent years, you may have seen one example on a popular tv series! Research so far, is showing the benefits to both children and the residents. For example residents are less prone to depression and have better physical health. They are also more likely to venture to the day room to join in with activities with the children rather than stay in their own rooms. There are also benefits to children from the partnerships such as increased confidence in new situations, developing their self esteem and developing their social and communication skills. Children benefit from the unique social experiences through playing alongside the residents and enjoying activities together.
Benefits for Children:
Benefits for Relatives:
From our perspective the most beneficial elements of this partnership is the play, learning, laughter and happiness. We hear the excited chatter as the children walk over to care home and then see the beaming smiles on everyones faces as they join together before the eruption of laughter as the play begins. Play is the heart of learning. Laughter is the heart of happiness. What better combination for the beginnings of a partnership!
The regular, small group visits, are the foundations of this partnership. Building on this we also create our own community celebration events. These are opportunities for the care home staff and nursery staff to work together to create celebrations that bring together our eldest and youngest generations to brighten each other’s day even more.
Take a peek at our hugely successful Queen’s Jubilee Garden Party for an example of our first celebration event that we invited the care home residents to enjoy alongside our families. We enjoyed a lot of delicious cakes donated to our Bake Off – congratulations again to the winners, dancing to music through the era’s, wearing our Queen’s crowns, having photos taken with the balloon arch and thrones, meeting our very own Queen Jane! and lots more. Click the link above to see all the photos!
(Thank you to the residents and their families for giving consent for their photographs to be shared on our website, and thank you to our families for their consent to share images with the care home too)