Last week all 3/4 classes were excited to welcome visitors from Dalkeith Heights Retirement Village to St Michael’s.  Below are some personal recounts from some of the students.  It was a great experience for all involved and we were very proud of our students.  Hopefully this partnership can continue into the future.

On Tuesday the 3rd of December, the 3/4 students were lucky enough to receive a visit from Dalkeith Heights Retirement Village. Each grade had the opportunity to perform their concert item and a Christmas themed song.

For our show, we presented the dance that we had performed at the concert. We later sang Christmas themed songs for them, some of which had actions.

After our performance, we were split up into groups of 3 with one visitor per group, and allowed a chance to show them our artwork from the art show. My companion was named Heather, and she was quite nice.

One of the highlights of the day was learning about our visitors from a different point of view. For instance, I learnt that Heather actually used to be a teacher at Grey Street! 

The 3/4 students are very grateful to have been privileged enough to spend some time with others from a different generation, and we sincerely hope that it will become a more frequent event.

Evie W

On the third of December some residents from Dalkeith Heights came to our school for a visit. Alexis (me) welcomed the visitors and introduced us to them before we started to present the visitors with our concert dances. After the dances and songs finished we presented our artwork we have created during art class. Previously, our class was placed into groups of 3 so everybody could present their artwork while 1 visitor came along with each group. Once we had all shared our artwork, we got to read a picture-story book with one of the visitors. It was an exciting experience, especially when some of the visitors shared stories and information from when they were in school and gave their thoughts and feedback about the art and dances. It gave all of us a great feeling like we have made somebody's day a bit better. When our class came back we shared our thoughts on the experience and everybody was a bit happier and more lively afterwards.

Alexis

When I first came into the hall I felt nervous but when we did the dance I felt calm and happy. In the groups  I felt shy but then I realised that she is very nice so then we showed art. In the end I felt really happy that I got  that time to spend with them.

Amber

I honestly think that this was a good incursion because we got to read and show the visitors our artwork.  My visitor was a really sweet lady who was partially deaf but was very nice, and she was trying to listen, as close as she could.  I had a great experience and think that we should do this next year.

Ashar

Our visit with the elderly community of  Dalkeith Heights was a fantastic time!  We should do it again. A lot of students enjoyed having them over. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the experience. We performed our concert song and rudolph the rednosed reindeer!!

Jack

At first I was nervous to talk to them but then it felt good. So we did the concert and our  Christmas songs and we showed them some of our art  and they had the best time, well the one we had.

Kaiden

On Tuesday the 3d of December we had some visitors in our school, they were from “Dalkeith Heights”. Our person was called Chris. They were all really nice, everyone showed them our artwork and we all had some laughs and after some of us felt joyful afterwards. I think that I speak for everyone that they had a great time.   

Kyan

My visitor was Heather. She was a primary school teacher.She also likes adult art but she thinks kid art is more creative.  I showed her my dragon and she thought it was amazing. Heather learned the piano when she was a kid.

Louis

Our class had people from Dalkeith heights to perform in front of.  We would like them to come back. They were really nice and comforting, they were also really glad to share their history.  After the dance we went in groups. Theo and I were in the same group with Vivienne. All of us met someone named Bruce. We showed him our artwork one by one, he was really thrilled about our work. His favourite hobby is riding his bike and he used to be a teacher at Grey St primary school. Then he asked us some questions like what grade are you in? And what's  your favourite hobby? Then it got to the point where we had to go and say goodbye.  And now that I reflect on that I realise that it was a good experience, I made somebody's day and I got to meet someone new.

Lakyn

Today we met the people from Dalkeith Heights and we performed our class concert dance and performed a christmas song for them.  We got into groups of three and met a new person.  We loved meeting the lovely people from Dalkeith Heights and they shared their stories with us.  We also presented our artwork and we were so happy we could see them and share our love and commitment to them.I met a really kind woman whose name is Chris, she was so kind and loved coming to us.

Thank you visitors for coming .

Zahlie

We met people from Dalkeith Heights. We met different people. One of the people I met was called Bruce. He was nice and we ended up finding out that he worked at Grey Street and that also his wife was a teacher.  She taught piano and guitar and one of her little kids does piano music on Spotify.  We hope that the Dalkeith people come again and we hope there's more people. We sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and we also did our concert song Everybody Dance Now .

Vivienne

Lots of the people there were nice, thoughtful and kind. We all felt nice doing all this because all the people at the end had smiles on themselves. 

Violet

We performed our concert song and we sang a christmas song for our visitors.We got into our groups we made sure to introduced ourselves.Then we showed them  our art from the art show and if we had time we would read them a book.My group read a Christmas book called The Christmas Pine.  We took turns reading each page.

Blair