Manzanita Kindergartners Bring Handmade Gifts and Big Hearts to Senior Living Center

A Valentine's Day service field trip bridges generations with songs, stories, blankets, and bubbles

The residents of Inspirations at the River Centre, an assisted living community at Craycroft and River, had a full social calendar on Friday morning. But nothing on it compared to what walked through the front door at 10 a.m.
Dozens of kindergartners from Manzanita Elementary School arrived in a wave of red and pink, carrying handmade Valentine's Day cards, fleece lap blankets tied by their own small hands, and enough energy to light up the entire building.
The visit, organized by Manzanita kindergarten teachers and approved by Principal Mr. Henikman, was what the school is calling a "service field trip," a concept that reframes the traditional school outing as an act of giving rather than receiving.And give they did.
The kindergartners recited poetry and sang "You Are My Sunshine" for an audience of seniors seated in chairs and wheelchairs arranged in a wide semicircle. Then came the main event: the children personally delivered the fleece lap blankets they had made in the classroom, walking up to individual residents and placing the soft bundles directly into their hands. For many of the five- and six-year-olds, tying the blanket knots had been a first, a fine motor skills lesson wrapped inside a lesson about generosity.
One of the morning's most tender moments came when a resident named Ann settled into a wingback chair, donned a heart-shaped headband, and read aloud to the children gathered at her feet. She had one request: that the students call her Oma, the German word for Grandma. They happily obliged, and Oma Ann held the room with a reading of "Crankenstein," her animated gestures drawing giggles from a rapt audience sprawled across the carpet with coloring pages and crayons.
Meanwhile, residents beamed as they read the handmade Valentine cards. The visit wrapped up the way all good kindergarten events should: with bubble machines. As iridescent bubbles floated through the activity room, the laughter became indistinguishable, with five-year-olds and eighty-year-olds sharing the same simple delight.
For the residents at Inspirations at the River Centre, the morning was a gift. For the Manzanita teachers, it was proof of a principle they already knew: that children are never too young to learn that the best field trips aren't always about what you go to see — sometimes they're about what you go to give.