Dozens of children from OBS De Veenvlinder in Eelde sang Sint Maarten songs for and with the elderly with dementia today. A long-standing success formula that makes both young and old happy.
With their homemade lanterns, the children carefully enter the living room of the De Duinstee nursing home. It’s also a bit exciting: singing for all kinds of unknown grandparents.
This is especially true when the eyes of the nursing home residents are all on you. They are prepared in a circle well in advance. They don’t get to visit singing children that often. So this is a special day.
“People here live in their own world, in the past,” explains caregiver Anja Bonder. The room in which she stands is completely furnished as a living room from the younger years of the residents. There is a rotary telephone on a side table and blue and white tiles hang on the wall.
“Every year we invite children from primary school to come and sing here. You can see our residents really live up to it. They enjoy it so much, those children and those lanterns. Then they remember everything from the past,” says Bonder .
This is how the children and the elderly celebrate St. Martin’s Day together (text continues below the video):