What do you get when you mix the past and the present? NOW! :)
The presence of grandparents in a child's life is something special.
They play a crucial role, as a guide, but at the same time as accomplices like a parent can never be! Grandparents are loving and wise, great teachers of useful life lessons, and always ready to give a hug.
Therefore, the idea of putting children and the elderly together, as it happened in this rest home, which is also a nursery, could only turn out to be a huge success!
In a rest home in Seattle ...
Inside the Providence Mount St. Vincent nursing home in Seattle, a nursery school and kindergarten school have been added, and the result has proved to be wonderful. The positive effects that the association of children between the ages of six months to five years and the elderly (about 400 people) has been so numerous that the film director Evan Briggs has filmed a documentary, in the facility to bear witness to the beauty of this heartwarming interaction.
The children and the seniors are together from Monday to Friday to perform the most diverse activities --- they dance, tell and hear stories, play musical instruments, draw or simply share time together.
The shared programs have been designed to provide benefits to both --- the children are educated and develop intellectual and motor faculties while the elderly keep their mind and body active!
Thanks to contact with elderly people, some with disabilities, the children also learn to become aware of physical differences, they learn that not only the big ones should help the little ones but also the opposite.
Receiving the affection and the company of these little children, on the other hand, illuminates the day for the guests at the rest home, often visited only occasionally by their families. As we all know, a child's smile is always the best medicine for all the pains and fears of adults.
Here is the documentary "Present Perfect" filmed by Evan Briggs inside the nursery.
