Yackandandah Primary School shared letter-writing program with Yack Health

During stage-three restrictions in the North East, Yackandandah Health residents found pen-pals in the children at the local school.

Principal Michael Edwards said his students jumped at the idea, after the health service approached them.

"The idea was that the seniors in their care could have some contact - it was happening during COVID restrictions and our remote learning," he said.

"It was very much thrown over to the kids to self-manage the letter writing.

"They either emailed letters, posted them to us or brought them in, so we could take them to Yack Health."

Mr Edwards said 100 letters were written over the few weeks.

"We put out a few general suggestions [of what to write about]; that they might like to describe their school or pets, or what they know about Yackandandah," he said.

"The great part was a lot of the residents wrote back as well ... they could share their memories of school.

"There were no real guidelines, and that gave the kids licence to follow what they would like to write about.

"It complemented learning really nicely."

Like the majority of schools outside of Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire, Yackandandah primary returned to class for term three on Monday.

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Mr Edwards said as much as possible, school was back to normal.

"We're still social distancing staff, and we're doing our best to minimise the number of parents gathering around the school at pick-up and drop-off," he said.

"We've had to cancel a couple excursions, which is unfortunate.

"There was a lot of innovation that happened during remote learning, making use of technology - it's amazing how much you can learn in a very short space of time.

"If we do go back to remote learning, we've got the set-up for it."

Mr Edwards said his students would happily return to letter-writing as well.

Osbornes Flat students, and primary schools in Rutherglen and Chiltern also took part in the inter-generational letter writing project.