The quilt hanging in Emily Corona’s third-grade classroom shows the “favorite things” of the students in her class, but also something else: the collaboration between a Groton school and seniors who visited the children throughout the year and quilted the creations they made.

The program, “Play is more fun with friends,” brought a group from the Groton Senior Center to Claude Chester Elementary School once a month for a program where the students played bingo, learned the card game “Spoons” and designed a quilt that the seniors then completed and presented to the class.

“We just had a really nice time doing it,” said Ivelisse Garcia, 8.

“They were caring, they were nice and sweet,” said Rafael Romero, 9.

“They were willing to put us before them,” said Yaniyah Greenidge, 8.

The senior center began the intergenerational program with a fifth-grade class at Claude Chester in 2003, and has kept it going since, bringing seniors in monthly. After the fifth-grade teacher left, Corona took it on.

“They get that one-on-one attention that they crave,” she said.

It also shows the children a different side of aging, said Carol Pratt, program supervisor for the Groton Senior Center.

“For some who do not have grandparents locally, it is great comfort and fun,” she wrote in an e-mail. “They also see physical limitations of some elderly and how they overcome it. Children have something special to look forward to every month. Lasting friendships occur. Seniors get to reminisce and share history.”

Activities have varied by year. In the program’s early days — 2004 and 2005 – meetings focused on the theme, “For a Greener Groton.” Speakers from the Groton Parks and Recreation Department, Public Works, Millstone Power Plant and the Water Pollution Control Department spoke to the children and seniors about trees, recycling, nuclear power, water treatment and conservation.

The group planted flowers at the school or to take home. In 2005, they planted an eastern white pine tree at Poquonnock Plains Park.

The Groton Education Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization that supports activities to enhance learning, provided $15,373 to support the program, along with activities at other Groton schools, including a literacy night at Northeast Academy and a garden at Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School.

Corona incorporated writing into the quilting activities and senior visits. For example, she’d ask the children to write an opinion piece about whether seniors make the best friends, or a narrative about what happened that day, including dialogue and description.

Brigitte Whittle, 75, of Mystic, went to the school once a month from January through May for the quilting project.

“I really enjoyed it, to be honest with you. The kids, they look forward to it when you are coming, they’re the third graders, they’re still really adorable,” she said.

The seniors cut muslin into rectangles, gave each child a piece, then gave them fabric crayons to design a square on the quilt that showed their favorite things, Whittle said.

After the children finished, the seniors took the squares, framed them and put the alphabet around the outside. Whittle quilted for about 200 hours along with two others, she said.

“We put a sleeve in the back so they could hang it up, and we put all the children’s names on the back, so they (would) know whose drawing is whose 10 years from now,” Whittle said.

She plans to volunteer again next year.

“The kids leaven an impression,” she said, adding that they enjoyed the adult time. “It’s amazing what they can do.”

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter: @Dstraszheim