Program areas at Friendship Center
The Friendship Center is an intergenerational child care facility that incorporates senior citizens from heath village, an adjacent retirement community, into its child care programs. Senior volunteers assist the Center's professional staff by teaching bible stories and foreign languages, conducting nature walks, providing musical accompaniment, reading stories, and supervising craft and woodworking projects. Children also interact with seniors through a pen pal program, at special events and at holiday celebrations. Other programs and activities include art, computers, dance, field trips, science/nature, soccer, swim lessons, and more. The facility also utilizes an interactive white board which incorporates technology into the lesson plans. The programs are developmentally age appropriate and are designed to foster self-confidence, improve competence in self-help skills, and develop those language abilities and inner controls necessary for effective social interaction. The facility stresses the process of learning and discovery to prepare the child for the many and varied learning situations he or she will encounter throughout life, attaching equal importance to emotional, physical, social and intellectual development. During the fiscal year ending june 30, 2022, the facility served 90 students throughout the school year. Due to the pandemic and the associated restrictions, activities were modified by replacing some in-person events with virtual options. Centenary university students provided a weekly program via zoom in which the college students would read aloud to the daycare students, and work on crafts and sing songs together. The students also took a virtual field trip to a local farm in the fall since they were unable to take their usual field trip to pick pumpkins. When the weather permitted, classes took walks around the heath village campus in order to get some fresh air and excercise. There were 14 seniors from the heath village community who participated in the pen pal program, in which students and their senior pen pals exchanged cards, pictures and crafts throughout the year. One senior was able to return to the facility in order to teach german to the students, and several other seniors provided in-person story time.