Love of reading brings generations together at Gracewood Residential Care
Grace Sinclair from Perth Modern School shares her love of reading with 95 year old Baptistcare Gracewood Residential Care resident Nancy.
Scroll to Explore
30 October 2018
News
| Aged Care Homes
At the beginning of the school year, Grace Sinclair, a Year 7 student from Perth Modern School was looking for ideas to fulfil the Community Service component of her school’s Pegasus Society; an initiative that recognises participation, effort and commitment to the wider community.
For many years, Grace has been reading classical books to her grandmother over the phone, so her parents encouraged her to think about reading to someone living in residential aged care.
Stephen Grasso, Chaplain at Baptistcare Gracewood Residential Care in Salter Point, helped connect Grace with 95 year old resident Nancy who shares Grace’s love of books. Nancy had started to find it difficult to read books for herself and so Grace’s offer to read to her was welcome news.
Nancy had wanted to read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for some time and the C.S. Lewis classic proved the perfect starting point with the ladies now well on their way to reading all seven tales in The Chronicles of Narnia.
Grace is very diligent, ringing Nancy twice a week to read a new chapter. Nancy says that whenever Grace reads, she closes her eyes so she can concentrate and listen to every word.
“Grace reads with such expression and passion. It almost transports me into the real scenes so that I can actually see the story unfolding in my imagination.”
Despite having more than 80 years between them, Grace and Nancy have developed a strong connection with Nancy even sharing her own personal stories about what is was like to work in the Women’s Land Army in Britain during World War II.
Click here for more information about residential aged care at BaptistCare.