Nine participants in the Adult Day Care Center at the Champaign County Nursing Home went to the Spurlock Museum with five University students last Thursday. The trip was part of Never Stop Exploring Champaign-Urbana, a program created by students in an AHS course called Active Living Projects.

The trip to Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., incorporated intellectual, social and physical wellness, said Leah Okner, senior in AHS. Okner, who has experience working with older adults, said the best way to interact with them is to ask simple questions about the weather or how their day is going.

“It starts with really small talk, but then they’ll open up and go into a story. They love to tell stories,” Okner said. “It’s kind of cool to find things that relate to them too, because we’re such a technology-based generation, but we can’t really talk about iPods with them.”

The five students who created the Never Stop Exploring program decided visiting interesting places in the community would best incorporate the different forms of wellness: physical, social, intellectual, environmental, psychological and spiritual.

“There’s different field trips we run, such as this one to the museum, and also to forest preserves, parks and apple orchards,” said Natalya Namts, senior in Communications. “Just being in the setting with younger generations makes it social. Ideally, we hit on each form of wellness just by the activities.”

Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, head of the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, said that the class began with speakers discussing the six areas of wellness, followed by the hands-on portion of the class.

“For a long time, we’ve been thinking of alternative models for student experiences and different ways of learning and we’ve found that team based learning and community based learning is very effective,” Chodzko-Zajko said.

During the museum tour, students read information about the exhibits to the participants. Exhibits from countries such as Egypt and Japan sparked conversations about vacations and exotic travels.

“We’ve developed a really good relationship with (the participants at the center),” Namts said.

Even when the semester ends, the Never Stop Exploring Champaign-Urbana program will continue. Namts said Volunteer Illini Projects will take over planning field trips for Adult Day Care Center clients beginning in January.

“(The students) are doing fantastic,” said Linda Kotynek, director of the Adult Day Care Center. “If it’s genuine, the elderly will know. They can see when people are being phony and just using them, but there’s a lot of laughing and joking because the students see an interest in them as people.”