Lymington Infants enjoy a 'Sweet Journey' to Colten Care's Linden House

School children discover Linden House's Olde Sweet Shop - and learn from residents about the confectionary of times gone by.

Recently Colten Care's Linden House in Lymington hosted a ‘Sweet Journey Through Time’, a reminiscence museum experience for Linden House residents and pupils from Lymington Infants school. There were a number of interactive exhibits for the children and residents to experience, including:

The Feels – a sweet and sensory guessing game for your hands and nose

Take it A-weigh – a traditional sweet shop experience, learning how to measure out bags of pick’n’mix

The Tasting Station – from licorice twigs to marzipan bricks, opportunities to taste flavours of bygone eras

Back 2 the Future – comparing sweet wrappers through time, from yesteryear to ones we see on the shelf today, before having a think about what sweets of the future might look like

Giants of our Time – an enormous Jaffa Cake the size of a large pizza!

Both the school children and Linden House residents thoroughly enjoyed the 'Sweet Journey' experience, the children learned lots about confectionary of the past, whilst the Linden House residents had a chance to reminisce about the sweets they enjoyed in their earlier years.  

And for the encore: sweet songs sung by the Robins 

Following on from this visit, Lymington Infant School's very special "Robins" Choir well known for their beautiful public performances at the Lymington Christmas Tree Festival and other events, visited Linden House to sing to the residents.

This cemented more lovely links between young and old, especially pertinent in the light of all recent research as well as daily evidence at Linden House about how beneficial it is for people with dementia to hear and be involved in music.

Benefits for all involved when local organisations work together 

There can be many benefits when local organisations are able to work together in this way. These children have obtained a very natural experience of being amongst people with dementia whilst many of the residents are visibly animated, clearly enjoying the stimulus of being amongst the very young.

And indeed the 'Sweet Journey Through Time' at Linden House, Colten Care's dementia specialist residential care home in Lymington can be repeated! So if other schools or groups are interested do contact Ben Benson Breen, who now coordinates activities for the "New Forest Cluster" of Colten Care's homes (more information about the homes below). You can contact Ben by email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   

Find out more about Lymington Infant School

Find out more about Colten Care's New Forest homes

Colten Care operates six residential nursing and care homes in the local area, including three in Lymington: Belmore Lodge, Court Lodge and dementia specialist Linden House. There are also homes in Brockenhurst (Woodpecker's), New Milton (Kingfisher's) and Mudeford (Avon Reach). Click on the links to find out more about each home...