Evelyn Bottega smooths back white hair already held neatly in place by a pink headband and pokes at the square where her palm-sized checker piece was just seconds earlier.
“He cheated,” the spry octogenarian says, “I mean it. He cheated.”
It’s a little hard to tell whether Bottega is really irked at kindergartener Keenan Monroe, who holds her red checker piece aloft before carefully placing it on the growing pile of red chips he has scored from Bottega.
The outsize game of checkers between the senior and the 6-year-old is echoed in a variety of activities taking place in the Island Health and Rehabilitation Center recreation room, where a half-dozen IRC residents in wheelchairs and nine children from the Big Kids program run by Bainbridge Island Child Care Centers sit together at round tables.
While most are playing games that range from cards to chess, several are working on a jigsaw puzzle, while others draw with markers or dab colored glue onto paper.
The level of interaction between seniors and kids is high.
“It wasn’t always that way,” Bainbridge Island Child Care Center director Anna Garrity said.
“This is a couple of levels up from the past. Before, the children would come and do things and the seniors would observe.”
Currently, activities that seniors and children do together include singing to piano accompaniment and signing – a skill many seniors and children share, Garrity said. The children go to the center weekly, ongoing contact that has fostered the intergenerational friendships.
And both generations benefit.
“It’s so heartwarming to see the reaction of the seniors to the children,” Garrity said. “But, it’s also great for the kids, because they often don’t have extended family nearby.”
Although Island Health and Rehabilitation houses clients of all ages who are on the mend, it is the seniors who typically interact with the kids. Selecting seniors to participate is the prerogative of Toni Wood, Island Rehabilitation’s recreation director.
Garrity notes that the seniors have also come to visit the children at the Children’s Center.
“We’re always open to having seniors come,” she said. “We’ve tried to recruit more retired people.”
All the children at BICC do some community service, like today’s visit to the seniors. The degree and kind of involvement varies with the age group; BICC cares for kids ranging from preschool through fifth grade.
“Kindergarten is the age we really begin to get serious about their helping,” Garrity said.
First and second graders bag food at Helpline and help with environmental cleanup. Children in grades three through five help choose their community service.
“We want the children to learn that, even at their young ages, they belong to a community and can make a difference,” Garrity said.
