By: Pamela Stern
Spring Creek Senior Partners (SCSP) and the Starrett Early Learning Center (SELC) have partnered to have Intergenerational Generation events that allow the seniors to take part in events with the young children. Recently they held two of these events one that took place at SELC on May 30th and the other one took place at SCSP on June 4th.
Jahiah Wilson, Executive Director of Spring Creek Senior Partners reached out to Starrett Early Learning Center’s Executive Director, Tammy Moore to gage if SELC would be interested in participating in an Intergenerational collaboration which they were interested in, which is how this partnership came to fruitation.
On May 30th eight older adults along with Robin Devonish, the NORC Supervisor went over to SELC and read short stories to the youngsters during their story time and played games with the children.
On June 4th The SELC students along with five teachers and eight parent volunteers accompanied 30 children over to the SCSP’s office and sang songs and made presentations to the seniors. Both of the Intergenerational events were 45 minutes to an hour.
The children enjoyed it and were very engaged in both of the events. SCSP members expressed great joy having the children around and asked if this can be done regularly. Some of the older adults shared interest in going to the SELC on their own to engage with the children.
This connection between the seniors and the children really ignited interest and everyone was enjoying themselves. This will become a quarterly event that will start up again at the beginning of the school year in September.
“I felt great. It was beautiful to see the generations connect and the children engage with the Older Adults. They were very talkative and excited on both sides. We look forward to doing it again,” said Robin Devonish, the NORC Supervisor.
Photos courtesy of: SELC
