It looks like the way the world should look all the time: It’s noontime on a shivery cold Thursday in February, but inside the community center of Woodside Village in Oak Bluffs, the immense room is awash in light. A tall Christmas tree still holds its full regalia of ornaments, and at the piano accomplished musician Michael Haydn plays a robust Mozart sonata.

But the most wonderful and most natural part of the scene is that at each of the immense tables kindergarteners from the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School in West Tisbury sit and eat and swap stories with the seniors who live at Woodside Village. The village itself is a beautiful collection of apartment buildings for seniors set on sprawling acres behind Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. The complex is one of three on the Island built and owned by the nonprofit group Island Elderly Housing.

On this Thursday young Annabel in a long-sleeved purple shirt with silky blonde hair and blue eyes, keeps company with Nancy Nitchie, who expresses interest in the fact that Annabel had not attended preschool. Annabel’s good friend Ella enters the scene, her Mary Sunshine personality preceding her, with her bob of brown hair, brown glasses and pinafore with pink and white polka dots. Ella brings me over to her lunch date, Betty Searle. “Ella is full of questions,” Ms. Searle says with evident pleasure. “She wonders where do old people live? And what about teeth falling out and do we have dentists?” Ella also gabs about her grandmother and her legion of cousins.

Next we meet Jamie Rivard, a beautiful young girl with pigtails who has her full-time speech therapist, Lloyd Petruzzell, in tow. In addition to acquiring vocabulary, Jamie is also learning to sign.

The heavy lifting — which includes serving dishes of macaroni and cheese and green salad, and making sure all other details have been taken care of — is done by charter school high schoolers, including 10th grader Zach Dupon and ninth grader Olivia Olenick. Zach is the grandson of master chef Jean Dupon, owner of Le Grenier restaurant in Vineyard Haven, and yes, Grandpere has been teaching Zach everything he knows about cooking. Olivia is spellbinding with aloe-green eyes, and pink, purple and orange stripes painted on her hair augmented by a purple cap. She wears a black Goth T-shirt representing a band called Chiodos.

The community room is alive with so many ages and flavors of people that Olivia and Chiodos fit in as naturally as the eldest resident, Anita, in her turquoise blouse adorned by butterfly appliqués, being read to by brown curly-haired Maria, whose book is titled I Paint.

The helpful high schoolers have been serving dinners to seniors at least three times a year, and all of them have learned life’s great lesson of how service sparks the heart and soul.

As this reporter trades good wishes with Ann Wallace, executive director of Island Elderly Housing, Zach Dupon jogs by with a number for us. “Forty-six,” he says and keeps moving. Ms. Wallace smiles. Apparently someone has assigned him to count heads of the lunch bunch for this newspaper story.

Other adults have played strong roles in making this event such a well-orchestrated success. Marie Larsen, charter school administrator and easy to spot — tall, thin, smiling and dressed in black — is in charge of all school activities, mentorships and community service work. The ever-personable Kevin MacFarland delivered the food, and in fact is routinely pressed into service whenever transportation of anything, people, food or otherwise, is required. Ann Baird, also an administrator at Island Elderly Housing, is on hand to make sure all runs smoothly, and it does — a big hotel in the Poconos could not have done better. Charter school principal Bob Moore, one of the few men on the Vineyard with a job that involves wearing a suit, is happy to announce that the school has now achieved its third year of the three-or-four-times-a-year dinner service to the Island elderly.

Ms. Wallace introduces me to Woodside resident Alma West, noting: “Alma just said something that was so gratifying to the people who put on the luncheon.” With a little prodding, Alma says: “I have three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren who visit me for four days every August. I love them dearly but I do wish I could see them more often, so today has been a special treat for me.”

Mr. Haydn the pianist plays Happy Birthday, and cupcakes with candles are presented to Woodside residents Rosemary Brown and Rita Reynolds. Tenth grader Oscar Thompson bears trays of cupcakes for all celebrants. Shirley Robinson enjoys hers with her grandnephews, Trey and Ryan.

In another part of the room, a new outbreak of fun occurs as charter school teachers Lori DiGiacomo and Mindy Brodsky lead a circle of little kids, high school kids and elder kids in a complete round of Hokey Pokey. “You put your whole self in, you put your whole self out, you put your whole self in and you shake it all about, you do the hokey pokey [index fingers jabbing the air] and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about!”

And it is what it’s all about. This joyous luncheon proves it. At about 2 p.m. the school bus appears, and the kindergarteners troop out. It’s clear to all a new tradition has taken hold on the Vineyard.