Sue Lawyer-Tarr, www.TeachingTolerance.org

With summer here, we are busy scheduling activities, camps, etc. for our children. Let's take a look at some of the ways we can cultivate intergenerational activities and relationships. Activities with grandparents and adopted foster grandparents and great aunts and uncles can greatly benefit children; especially during the summer when we have long days together. Here are some suggestions for children and seniors to enjoy together.

• Host a grandparent tea party at your center for all types of grandparents and senior friends. Decorate your tea table with a beautiful cloth tablecloth, cloth napkins, flowers arranged by the children, and real porcelain teacups and pots. (Garage sales and thrift stores are wonderful places to find fancy teacups, teapots, sugar bowls and cream pitchers and cloth tablecloths.) Serve herbal teas and cookies baked by the children. Send out invitations created by the children inviting grandparents to an English High Tea Party. Children could share a poem they wrote for the occasion or introduce their grandparent to the group and share a few things that they treasure about their grandparent.
  
  
• Visit a local garden club to see how your children can interact with their senior members. Perhaps a senior member would be able to come to the center and teach children the basics of seed propagation and care. See if children can go on a garden tour of some of the senior's gardens. Children could draw pictures of the senior's garden to mail to them as a thank you when they return to the center or if possible draw pictures of the flowers and garden while they are there.
  
  
• Visit an adult daycare or senior center and participate in their exercise classes. Children love the sit down chair exercise classes often held there. Pair them up with a senior buddy for the exercise class and watch both groups get a workout. Children often come up with some great new versions of chair exercises. If there isn't a chair exercise class at a senior center, have the children create one and go to the center to teach the seniors.
  
  
• Call a local square dance or folk dance club and see if any of their senior members would be interested in demonstrating and teaching dancing. Have seniors and children come in their fanciest duds.
  
  
• Call local nursing homes and get a list of residents who have few visitors. Develop foster grandparent relationships. Let your children pick a name of a resident they will call, visit, and send notes and homemade cards to. A card and a call on the senior's birthday bring much cheer. You can have a calendar of senior birthdays and call them and sing "Happy Birthday" over the phone.
  
  
• Visit senior centers and see if there are seniors who will volunteer to come to teach individual children how to knit, crochet, quilt, needlepoint, make jewelry, create flower arrangements, decoupage, paint and water color, play an instrument, or teach woodworking, fishing, acting, singing or musical skills. During the summer, seniors could be a guest at lunch, and afterwards share stories and information about their hobby with the children. If children are interested in learning this craft, they will put their name in the box to be drawn for who goes first. Keep projects simple at first -- ones that can be finished in 2 hours at most. Once a group of children have completed a basic project one on one with your senior volunteer, you will have a feel as to whether a small group project involving 3 to 4 children might work. Most seniors need one on one contact with children. This also helps cultivate close relationship and bonding between individuals.
  
  
• Visit retirement homes and play cards with senior citizens. Gin rummy, hearts, spades, poker, slap jack and double solitaire are fun. Some children are ready to learn bridge. Seniors can also teach jacks, marbles, cat in the cradle, hopscotch and jump rope games to one child at a time.
  
  
• Put up flyers at local libraries encouraging seniors in the community to volunteer to read to a child or listen to a child read. Spelling tests usually occur on the same day each week. Seniors could volunteer to come by and help children with pre-quizzes, difficult words and vocabulary use.
  
  
• See if there is a storyteller club in your city that has seniors who will coach the children on the art of storytelling. It is becoming a lost art! Some seniors are great storytellers. Children love to hear stories about what it was like growing up a long time ago.
  
  
• Check out seniors living in your neighborhood. Once a month do something nice for them with the children. For example, encourage children to rake their yard or take a plant they've grown or a snack they've made to them. A card created by a child delivered by the child with a smile and a single flower can mean a lot. Children learn little acts of kindness can bring great joy to others lives.
  
  
• Visit a retirement center and put on a play that involves some audience participation. Examples: singing old songs that everyone knows, counting together, stomping their feet or clapping hands to a rhythm or whistling. Have the children take cookies and punch to serve the seniors. Children enjoy visiting with seniors after the play and enjoy hearing the seniors talk about their acting ability. Encourage as much interaction as possible. Children can hand out programs and song sheets and deliver each with a hug.
  
  
• Hold an afternoon New Years party at a local retirement home or nursing home. Take hats, balloons, noisemakers, streamers, and decorations the children have made. Play Bingo for prizes. Everyone can join hands and make a wish for the world for the New Year. Sing old songs the seniors know and can teach the children. Have a child dress up as Baby New Year and another child dress up as Old Father Time. Set your own time for a New Years Count Down and count out the old year. Enter the New Year with lots of hugs and humor. Have everyone share his or her favorite jokes.
  
  
• Have a group discussion about a value such as Honesty, Compassion, Integrity, Charity, etc. with both children and seniors participating. Have seniors tell stories about people they know and experiences they have had that demonstrate the true meaning of these words. Pair up a senior with a child and have them pick a word off the "Tree of Human Values" and look it up in the dictionary and talk about how they could incorporate this value into their daily life.
  
  
• Have children help elderly decorate their Christmas trees and take them down after Christmas. Children can make an ornament to go on their senior friend's tree. Their foster grandparents appreciate ornaments shaped like a Christmas tree with a school picture of them in the middle. Grandparents love to show off pictures of their grandchildren.
  
  
• Invite a senior who grew up in another country to be your guest at lunch and to speak to the children after lunch about their memories as a child. They can bring items and photo albums to show the children and perhaps a recipe for a snack the children could help prepare. Follow up by reading children's book about their country and possibly playing some music from that country. During the summer, learn about a different country each week. The Internet helps us all become global neighbors. It's a valuable resource in gathering information. Have children explore the web for the country they select and even call the different nationalities local clubs to see if they have a senior member who could be their guest. Empower the children to create this event. Children think, plan, initiate action and call, invite, and host the senior representative of the country they choose. Learn how to say "hello," "goodbye," "please" and "thank you" in each language.
  
  
• Have seniors conduct an etiquette class on the proper way to introduce and greet people, set a table, write a thank you note, order from a menu in a restaurant, etc. They can role-play one on one with the children in front of the larger group, asking the children to point out the right way of handling social situations.
  
  
• Have children role play a news reporter who is interviewing a senior citizen on video or cassette for a radio or TV show about the seniors' life. Children can interview their grandparents or a foster grandparent. Have children invite their friends over to listen to the interview. All it takes is a quiet corner, a cassette or VCR and some seats for an audience to listen to the interview. It is also fun to have children draw seniors while they are being interviewed. Use Golden Days - A Beginners Guide to Collecting Family History and Community Traditions. (see Resources sidebar) This student guide has questions to ask seniors that will stimulate them to tell about their past.
  
  Sue Lawyer-Tarr is a national school-age consultant, college instructor, workshop leader and author based in Oklahoma. Sue has authored two books, How to Work With School-Age Children and Love Them and School-Age Child Care Professional Training: A Workbook for Teaching Staff, published by School-Age Notes.