Afternoon tea bridges the generation gap

Wednesday 02 May 2018

Forest Primary is holding a 'mission week' with one of the school's projects seeing young and old parishioners get together for afternoon tea.

Residents from local care homes and older family members were invited to join pupils from the school as part of a healthy and active project which encouraged pupils to give back to the community to improve the wellbeing of others and themselves.

Three coffee afternoons are being held this week and Express was invited to one to see what conversations were like between the generations.

Winifred De La Mare, 85 was siting at a table with seven year old Peyton Snell. Mrs De La Mare said: "I have been really excited about coming to Forest school today, I was a pupil here 80 years ago. I have fond memories of the teachers especially Miss Parsons, who I liked very much."

"In my day if you were really naughty at school you used to get a smack with the ruler, we all had a lot of respect for the Headmaster Percy Martel who was very strict, luckily I was never naughty."

Peyton widened her eyes in shock and said: "That is rude and a little sad. If we are naughty they just tell you off a bit. I listen but some other people don't listen and they get told off a lot, but they still don't hurt them."

The teachers involved were Miss Mills and Mrs De La Rue who said that it was part of the school's wellbeing initiative and the five ways to wellbeing, which were to: learn, be active, give, connect and notice.

Miss Mills said: "The afternoon tea was about giving something back to the community and connecting with the older generation and noticing them. We had a group yesterday and one of the boys said it was one of the best days of his life. The feedback so far has been really positive."

Mrs De La Rue added: "Its a great opportunity for the whole school to connect with the community and people of a different generation."

Miss Mills continued: "We spoke with the children about what they may wish to chat to their visitors about and they decided things to ask them would be how they were, what school was like when they were at school and what games they liked to play."

Numerous games were put out for the children and their guests to play with and around the room seven year olds were drawing with people in their seventies and young and old were enjoying Connect Four.

Pictured: Left to right: Logan Whitaker, Jane Dawson-Ball and Oliver Trudgeon

Express caught up with nine year olds Logan Whitaker and Oliver Trudgeon who were hoping to beat 61 year old Jane Dawson-Ball at chess.

Oliver said: "We have a chess club here at Forest school and I really enjoy playing." Mrs Dawson-Ball said: "I have a horrible feeling Logan could beat me, I haven't played for a very long time!"

Logan admitted: "I get a bit nervous talking to older people in case I say anything rude, like asking them how old they are" while Oliver said: "I like to talk to older people as you can find out what happened before in history."

Mrs Dawson-Ball said it was a fun afternoon: "There is always common ground between the generations, we talk about birds, insects and flowers and it is nice to chat to the children about all sorts of things" adding "I am not going to let him win just because he is a child, it is important to play fairly."

Pictured main image: Winifred De La Mare and Peyton Snell