To celebrate 30 years of the famous book We’re Going On a Bear Hunt, a group of children visited Longcliffe Nursing home to visit our elderly friends. Lots of exciting activities were planned. Mel describes the visit:

“This morning the children in the Lodge went on a Bear hunt up the hill to Longcliffe Care Home, on the way we sang... “we’re going on a bear hunt, we’re going to catch a big one...”. When we arrived, the staff offered us a drink and we introduced ourselves to the residents. A couple of the residents noticed that we had a few new faces, asking those children their names and how old they were.

The staff at Longcliffe had their activity ready for us, they supplied us with bear colouring pictures and pencils and crayons for us to colour with the residents, the children were wonderful sharing. After the colouring activity, each resident was given a teddy bear, and all the children got to name the bears, their names were... “George”, “Peppa”, “Bagpuss”, and many more.

We then started our Bear hunt where there were some bear pictures hidden around the room to find. Each resident had a child on their team, working as a team they spotted a bear picture and sent their partner to go and fetch the bear and take it back to the resident. At the end of our bear hunt, each child gave their resident a certificate for finding the bears. Feeling very proud of their certificate, the residents asked if they could have a photo with their certificate.

It was then time for a yummy biscuit, a drink and a story. I read the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to the residents and our Watermead children. The children helped to read the story and the residents cottoned on and joined it with the words. Fun was had by all, we said “Goodbye” and set off down the road with dinner waiting for us.”

Thank you very much to Mel and Rory for a fantastic visit to our friends, and thank you Longcliffe for having us.