Windsor Place Nursing Home Hosts Innovative Kindergarten Program
(Page 2 of 2)
June 2009
By Ursula Turner
Teacher Sherri Chittum instructs the young students, and residents also help with activities such as reading, writing and arithmetic – and even cooking and gardening.
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Each morning, residents and students sing and dance as part of a daily exercise program. Then one of the students – a different one each day – gets to ring the bell beside the classroom door to announce that it’s time to return to class.
One part of the inner wall of the classroom is low enough, with glass at the top, to allow residents in wheelchairs to watch the children as they pursue their activities. They don’t have to sit outside looking in, though. They are welcome to enter and help with games or read to the students, or let the students read to them. They also help with art projects. This age-to-age interaction is what the program is all about.
“Residents will tell the children stories,” Rooks said, “and the kids will learn things from these stories they may never have learned in a regular school setting.”
The residents are learning, too.
“Some of them had sort of lost interest in living,” Rooks said. “They forgot how to do a lot of things, because everything is done for them here. But that changed when the kids came. Now, they have an interest in helping the students. Having the kids here is giving them a new lease on life.”
She said she would love for every nursing home to have a kindergarten classroom. “It’s been such a success, not only for the kids, but for the residents as well.”
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