The Grandparents Day Activity Pack

For activity coordinators, aged care homes, schools, and community groups. Free to print, copy, and adapt.

1. Twelve activity ideas, graded by effort

Low effortReady within a week:

• The call-week. Every resident receives at least one unhurried call or visit in the week before the day. See the planner in section 2.
• Question jar afternoon. A jar of life-story prompts on each table at morning tea. Staff draw and ask; residents answer as much or as little as they wish.
• Photograph amnesty. Families are asked to send one photograph and one sentence of story. Display them for the week.
• Music from their twenties. One hour, one playlist per decade represented in the room.

Medium effortTwo to three weeks of lead time:

• School visit morning. A local class visits: baking, gardening, board games, show-and-tell in both directions. Brief the children with three questions each.
• Life-story hour. A guided recorded conversation with one resident and their family, using the prompts in section 3.
• Grandfriends pairing. Residents without visiting family are paired with a visiting family, student, or volunteer, with a commitment to monthly contact. Sheet in section 4.
• Skills exchange. Residents teach something: cards, knots, pastry, mending. Visitors teach something back: the phone, the tablet, the slang.

Bigger buildsWorth planning for October:

• Intergenerational fair. Stalls run jointly by residents and students.
• Memory map. A large local map on the wall; residents pin the sites of first jobs, weddings, homes. Local historians and papers often take interest.
• Letters across generations. A term-long exchange between a class and the home, culminating in a Grandparents Day meeting.
• Open morning for the suburb. The home as host, not destination: coffee, photographs, stories, and a welcome desk staffed by residents.

2. The call-week planner

Goal: no resident goes through Grandparents Day week without personal contact beyond care tasks. Family first; volunteers next; a scheduled wellbeing check-in call for anyone otherwise missed.

Name	Caller or visitor	Planned day	Done / outcome

The midweek rule. Review the list midweek. Anyone not yet claimed is assigned a caller that day. The unclaimed names are the reason the program exists.

3. Life-story prompts

The questions families always meant to ask. One or two per visit is plenty.

• What is your earliest memory?
• What was your first job, and what did it pay?
• How did you meet your husband or wife? What did you think of them at first?
• What did your mother cook that you have never tasted since?
• What was this suburb or town like when you arrived?
• What is something you did that would surprise people in this room?
• Who taught you the most, and what was the lesson?
• What do you wish you had asked your own grandparents?

4. Grandfriends pairing sheet

For residents without visiting family. A grandfriend commits to one contact per month: a visit, a call, or a letter.

Resident	Grandfriend	Contact rhythm	First contact date

5. Evidence template (for Australian providers)

Under the Strengthened Quality Standards, social connection is a documented provider responsibility. Recording your Grandparents Day program turns a good day into auditable evidence of a social-connection strategy under Standard 1.

Field	Record
Program and date	e.g. Grandparents Day intergenerational morning, 25 October 2026
Participants	Residents involved (names or count), visitors, staff
Residents reached who have no regular visitors
Observed outcomes	Engagement, mood, requests to repeat, concerns raised
Follow-up actions	New pairings, call schedules, referrals, escalations
Recurring commitment adopted	What continues after the day, how often, owned by whom

6. The week after

Grandparents Day works when something recurs: a visiting roster, a call schedule, a friendship. Agree on one recurring commitment before the pack goes back in the drawer, and write it in the evidence template above.

If your team cannot sustain weekly personal contact for every resident by hand, that is a solvable problem. careplans AI provides scheduled, documented wellbeing check-in calls that listen, record, and escalate to human carers, so that no one is missed between visits. Check-in calls supplement human connection; they do not replace it.