Carol Singing at Shockerwick

A man was walking along the beach one day. Ahead he noticed another, older man picking up a starfish that had become stranded on the sand and throwing it back into the sea.

“Why do you bother?” the man asked him. “The beach goes on for miles and countless starfish get stranded every day. You can’t really make a difference.”

The old man looked at the starfish in his hand and then he threw it to safety among the waves. “I can make a difference to this one,” he replied.

Countless children feel stranded at school. For some Calder House can make a real difference.

Saturday, 19 December 2009 00:00

In the last week of term, several pupils from Calder House School offered to sing carols to the residents of Shockerwick Residential Home. We were excited to go and chose to sing several of the carols and songs we sang at our Carol Concert the week before, including O Hush Thee, Silent Night and the Calypso Carol. We also entertained the residents with verse and prose speaking, including humorous verses, an extract from Michael Foreman’s ‘War Game’ and John Betjamen’s poem ‘Christmas’. Some of the children wrote about this experience. Here's what they had to say:

“I enjoyed seeing the residents at Shockerwick because we cheered them up!”

“I enjoyed the Shockerwick – I liked singing the carols and making the residents smile. Some of them joined in."

“When we sang The 12 Days of Christmas I spotted that all the elderly people were singing along and laughing”.

“I wanted to go to make the elderly people happy. I loved their house and I would like to help them one day.”

...We hope we will be invited back next year and would like to wish everyone at Shockerwick a very Merry Christmas!