Many schools across the country are becoming aware of the benefits of intergenerational learning and this bout of year 11 and 12 have learned friendship has no age limit.
Aged care facilities around New South Wales’ Penrith will receive fortnightly visits from students as part of a new intergenerational initiative with Kingswood High School.
Kingswood students will visit Heritage Kingswood Aged Care Facility whose residents visited the school earlier this year. The Term 1 visit saw many students write cards and create gifts for their visitors while hospitality students cooked for them and spent quality time getting to know them.
Community and Family Studies teacher, Nicole Geyer, told The Western Weekender that the visit was so successful the school wanted to extend the idea to more facilities in the area.
“We know that a lot of older people don’t have contact with family, or they have passed away, so it is beautiful for them to have someone to chat to as you never know how much it means to a person and the kids get a lot out of it as well.”
Year 11 students kicked off the initiative at SummitCare last week and Year 12s are booked in for this week to provide company and conversation to residents for a few hours.
Ms Geyer hopes students can do more activities with residents such as painting nails, playing board games or just hearing more life stories. She also wants to see younger year levels get involved to learn the values of intergenerational interaction.
