A resident at an Okotoks seniors home lights up every time she has some young friends from a daycare wave at her through the window.
“I just adore the children — it just brightens your day,” said Tudor Manor resident 82-year-old Kathleen Sylvestre about the children at VIK Academy daycare. “When we see them outside, we wave and say hello.”
VIK daycare is in its third year of its intergenerational French Immersion program in which children interact with the residents at Tudor Manor — in fact, the daycare is in Tudor Manor.
Prior to COVID-19 the students would interact with residents with craft activities, story-time where seniors read to the students, and just building friendships by sharing the same building.
They are still interacting, but it's done through technology as the young students, still at Tudor Manor, are kept separate from the residents because of COVID.
“In the meantime, we are using technology,” said Julie Errmann, VIK Academy founder. “The senior residents have their connection and there will be seniors reading stories to the children.”
The children also participate by telling stories.
“It gives a chance for some back and forth,” Errmann said.
Ingenuity is needed.
In past years, residents and the children would walk together for the annual Terry Fox Run in the fall.
But not this year.
“We made sure we scheduled times so our little friends (the students) could be by the window so they could cheer the seniors when they walked by,” Errmann said. “Then when the children went walking, we made sure they went by windows and balconies for the seniors.”
When weather is permitting, the children sing outside, performing for the residents who watch from their respective balconies.
Joelle Guzzo, has worked at VIK for the past three years, said the daycare had to adapt quickly when re-opening after the initial COVID shutdown.
“I started to create Zoom exercises and one successful one is Pictionary,” she said. “We had a whiteboard and the seniors had whiteboards. We had the children draw and they would guess.
“That was so successful we went over our time.”
Other successful events were Zoom storytelling and singing songs together.
Recently the children have helped build birdfeeders out of milk jugs.
“It was a craft and some motor skills involved for the children to build these,” Guzzo said. “Then they went out and hung them on the fence and the residents were waving from the windows and thanking them.”
At Halloween, the students wore their costumes and paraded outside for the residents.
Samantha Mathieson’s 5 ½ year old son Arthur has been at VIK for the past two years.
“He loves showing people what he has built,” Mathieson said, who also works at VIK. “Arthur would go up and do Lego with the seniors. Not having his grandparents close and having the seniors was awesome.”
He said Arthur has started to adjust to visiting through Zoom.
“You would think it would be hard to get off of screens but sometimes with Zoom it can be hard to get his attention,” Mathieson said. “But doing familiar things like singing songs for the seniors - each child gets to do their own bit, and he gets to have some attention put on him.
“He loves going to the window and saying hi to the residents.”
Julie Trotter, a recreational therapist at Tudor Manor, said having the technological contact with the children has been important to the residents during COVID.
“It is not as good as being in-person, but it is still wonderful, the residents still look forward to it,” Trotter said. “It’s a program that takes time, but it is well worth it.”
But it’s not like the good old pre-COVID days, when the residents and seniors could have in-person visits with one another.
“Words cannot express the connection they had,” Trotter said. “When the children would walk through the building before COVID they would find their favourite friends and say hi and vice-versa.
“Still to this day they (the residents) are looking out the windows whenever the kids go by.”
