Independent Romsey school, Embley, reached out to Woodley Grange recently as part of their community classroom activities, with the aim of bringing generations together, sharing skills and learning from each other.

A collaborative approach was taken with the community initiative and the children from Embley were involved in coming up with activity ideas to share with the residents, resulting in a very informative and rewarding first session at Woodley Grange.

During the session, Embley’s history students thoroughly enjoyed learning about the lives of the residents and discussed the generational differences in their childhoods. After the session, one of the residents remarked: “It’s so nice to have this type of experience with the younger generation, we just had a marvellous time”, another added: “I hope they come back and we can all become very good friends”. Fortunately, this is the first of many sessions, with further meetings planned with the school’s art, music and drama scholars.

The next event will be with Embley’s art scholars, which will be two 30-40 minute resident workshops, focusing on flowers. The first session will be observational painting of flowers with watercolours and the second will be creating origami flowers. This engaging activity is ideal for stimulating the brain, strengthening fine motor skills, as well as being great for well-being. The residents are also looking forward to being entertained with recitals and performances from the Music and Drama scholars.

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