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By BRITTANY HUGGINS
Staff Writer
The human body is a fascinating thing, and this week students in Grenada County will embark on an amazing journey through the human body by way of the health education program Body Walk.
The Body Walk exhibit will be at Grenada Upper Elementary until Friday, according to Grenada County 4-H Youth Development Agent Jan Walton.
Walton said students from Grenada Lower Elementary, Grenada Upper Elementary and Kirk Academy will participate in the Body Walk.
“The Body Walk is designed to educate young students on healthy eating habits and being physically healthy,” Walton said. “The exhibit was developed to address increasing national concerns about the lack of physical activity and the declining nutritional status of young children.”
Walton said the Body Walk consists of a 40-foot-by-40-foot walk-through exhibit representing the human body. Ten stations are featured - the brain, muscles, bones, lungs, skin, stomach, heart, esophagus, intestines, artery, mouth and Pathway for Life - and students tour the human body with The OrganWise Guys (volunteer nursing students from Holmes Community College) as their guides.
The exhibit, which is geared to all fourth and fifth graders in the county, according to Walton, is sponsored by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Mississippi, the Mississippi attorney general’s office, Mississippi Health Corps, the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi and the Mississippi 4-H Program.
“Thanks to the sponsors of the Mississippi Body Walk, the program is provided at no cost to the schools or the students,” Walton said.
“We’re so glad the Body Walk Program is in our county for the second time,” Walton said. “The kids have learned so much and have really been excited about it. It brings the body alive so they can better understand how everything works.”
The tour begins when students, in groups of six to eight, walk through a giant ear into the brain. Inside the huge brain dome, students experience ‘brain waves’ and learn about brain function, Walton said.
After they leave the brain, the students are each given a bookmark designating them as a food, such as a carrot, hamburger or piece of cheese, she said. The foods step into the exhibit’s larger-than-life mouth, are swallowed through the esophagus tunnel and move into the stomach dome.
As the students go through each station, they participate in hands-on activities, Walton said. For instance, in the mouth they will get to simulate like a floss. We have big teeth, and the kids take a rope to brush the teeth.
From the stomach, the students travel through the small intestine, where they are absorbed into the blood, she said. Then they follow the path of the nutrients to the heart, lung, bone, muscle and skin stations. Students leave the body through a cut in the skin and proceed through Pathway for Life. This final station recaps key health concepts from each of the nine previous stations, she said.
At the end of the tour, each student receives a pencil, a Body Walk activity book and a sticker, according to Walton. In addition, each participating school is issued a health kit to reinforce the program.
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Submitted By:
Teresa Jackson, Principal GUES
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Submitted:
9/20/2008
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