A preschool inside a West Seattle nursing home brings joy to young and old

In West Seattle there is a preschool that is a bit like one of those Russian nesting dolls. Or a turducken, if that’s more your speed.

The preschool, called the Intergenerational Learning Center, is located inside Providence Mount St. Vincent, an assisted living facility for elderly residents.

Every day the kids &#8212 ages six months to six years old &#8212 spend some time with the residents. Average age: 90.

The day I visited there was a sing-a-long. A class of three to five-year-old kids sang, danced and sat on the floor, in front of a row of seniors who quietly nodded their heads or sang from chairs and wheelchairs. A woman with a guitar led them through old classics like “You Are My Sunshine” and an assortment of kids songs.

“It was observed that, really, we want to build on the community,” said Marie Hoover, director of the Intergenerational Learning Center. “And what does community need? It needs a variety of ages.”

So the kids and the seniors get together to do everything from storytelling and singing, to making sandwiches that will be delivered to homeless people at the Union Gospel Mission. But for 89-year-old resident, Mary Brown, her favorite activity is art.

“I love art with the kids,” she said. “To think that they can take their little fingers and develop these ideas in their head to form a man or a one-eyed purple people eater.”

Brown volunteered at Providence Mount St. Vincent for many years, and it’s the presence of children that helped her decide this was where she wanted to live out the rest of her days.

“Oh, we love it,” Brown said. “It just brings back joy to us and we laugh. Isn’t that wonderful to open up your lungs and laugh? I absolutely love it. I forget who I am, where I am, how old I am. I feel very blessed.”

Thomas Haver, 74, agrees with that sentiment.

“I think it’s fantastic and they’re all cute!” Haver said.

Melinda Gehrke’s three-and-a-half year old daughter is in the program, but she also works at Mount St. Vincent as a dietician.

“There are residents who have rooms that face the playground. I’ll be in the room and it’s really loud and I’ll say, ‘Oh, do you want me to shut that?'” Gehrke said. “And you can just see their faces. They’re like, ‘No. This is my favorite part of the day.'”

Hoover talks about what the kids get out of the interactions.

“What they get is a normalizing of aging. Obviously, there’s a lot of warmth between the residents and the kids,” Hoover said. “But in terms of sort of a long-term response, that sense of, ‘I’m comfortable with you. You’re in a wheelchair, you’re in a walker.'”

I remember being scared of elderly people as a child, especially those in wheelchairs or in nursing homes.

“I had the same experience as a Girl Scout,” Hoover said. “You know, you go in, you’re singing songs and they’re all lined up in chairs and there’s not really any way to engage them. And that’s what we’re all about here. It’s all about engagement. The kids and the residents are touching hands and patting heads. There’s an exchange there that’s different than performing.”

Hoover says there are three intergenerational programs in Seattle and about 500 in the United States.