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HEALTHY, HAPPY ME PROGRAM
Eighty-eight Lincoln Grade School Kindergarteners visited the Clay County Medical Center for the Healthy, Happy ME program. The program is an approach to help children practice healthy eating habits, exercise every day and stay safe.
The kids were divided into groups and rotated every 15 minutes where they visited the Emergency Room, Radiology, and the Mark A. Chapman Wellness Center.
While in the Emergency Room, kids were shown x-rays of accidents with a skull, leg, and neck. Tyce Young, Director of Nursing, used the picture of a head fracture to say, “This is why you should wear a helmet while riding your bicycle”. He also encouraged the kids to drink milk to help make their bones strong rather than having soda with their meal. Tyce said, “If your bones aren’t strong they’re going to break.”
In the Radiology department, Justin Begnoche, Radiology Technologist, demonstrated how an x-ray is taken. He also emphasized the importance of wearing a bicycle helmet to help protect against falls.
Justin said, “Getting stitches is not fun.” He told the children it was possible to break their skull without even cutting their head. He went on to say that heads can break just like arms and legs. “Then you’re really in trouble and you get to leave on a helicopter. That’s a really bad injury.”
Justin also used an anatomical health model as a teaching tool to show kids the inside of a human body. He took out the lungs to show the organ needed to breathe. He asked, “Do we want to fill our lungs with cigarette smoke or dust or dirt? No, because we want to keep those lungs good and healthy for a long, long time.”
He also took out other organs and described the function of the heart, stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, bladder, and brain.
At the Mark A. Chapman Wellness Center, Director Ryan Sanneman first talked about healthy foods that fuel our bodies. He said, “Food contains the nutrients we need to grow and keep our bodies healthy. We need to eat a variety of foods that contain vitamins and minerals.”
Later, the kindergarteners went outside for some physical activity. They played Simon Says and during the game the kids did a series of stretching, jumping jacks, push-ups, running in place, balancing on one foot, arm curls, and other exercises.