Preschool in a Nursing Home Transforms Elderly Residents

What happens if you paired the very young with the very old? It’s being done at a preschool in Seattle, where child care takes place throughout a campus which is also home to more than 400 older adults. Called the Intergenerational Learning Center, the preschool is located within Providence Mount St. Vincent, a senior care center in West Seattle. Five days a week, the children and residents come together in a variety of planned activities such as music, dancing, art, lunch, storytelling, or just visiting. And now this incredible place is about to have its own film. Called “Present Perfect,” it was shot over the course of the 2012-2013 school years by filmmaker Evan Briggs, who is also an adjunct professor at Seattle University. Funded completely out of her own pocket and shot by her alone, Briggs has now launched a Kickstarter to fund the editing of the movie. She has more than $45,000 of her $50,000 goal with 15 days to go. Residents of “the Mount,” Briggs said, did a “complete transformation in the presence of the children. Moments before the kids came in, sometimes the people seemed half alive, sometimes asleep. It was a depressing scene. As soon as the kids walked in for art or music or making sandwiches for the homeless or whatever the project that day was, the residents came alive.”

Source/more: ABC News

David Wingate is an elder law attorney, who practices in Frederick and Montgomery Counties, Maryland. The elder law practice consists of wills, powers of attorney, living wills, trusts, asset protection and Medicaid.