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St. Christine students get inside look
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .St. Christine third-graders Mya Kaggiano (left) and Elizabeth Vennetti took a few seconds during their health talk to look over the nutritional pyramid together.
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School nurse Suzie Cavalier brought an anatomically correct human body to help explain the intricacy of the digestive system to the third-graders.
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Cavalier explained that every person’s small intestine is 23 feet long. To show how long that was, Cavalier (right) asked students Erika Hankavich (left) and Gregory Margione to help her hold the string taut.
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Nurse Cavalier asked students to come up and identify parts of the human body to show what they learned during the health and nutrition discussion.
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After learning a lot about health and nutrition, Stacy McClelland and Wendy DelBoccio’s third-grade students posed with a human body and a food pyramid. Their knowledge of both will help them be healthy in the future.
By SARAH FOOR
Even though the third-graders at St. Christine’s have studied a science unit on the human body, they still let out a gasp when school nurse Suzie Cavalier showed them a mannequin that displayed the organs and parts that work beneath our skin.
“It’s nothing to surprised about,” teacher Wendy DelBaccio assured her students. “That’s what all of us look like on the inside.”
With the help of her anatomically-detailed friend, Cavalier aimed to demystify digestion and nutrition in a presentation to the third-graders of DelBaccio and Stacy McClelland’s classrooms on March 30.
Cavalier first tackled the subject of nutrition by explaining the Food Guide Pyramid, focusing on foods that give bodies energy like whole grains and proteins.
“Don’t eat a lot of foods in one pyramid group,” Cavalier stressed. “Eat lots of different things every day in each group and you’ll feel a difference.”
Afterward, Cavalier’s focus moved to digestion and how bodies use and process food. The mannequin displayed all of the parts of the digestive system – the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestine and rectum – and Cavalier explained how each organ works.
“Did you know that our small intestine is 23 feet long? All of it is curled up inside of your abdomen,” the nurse told the students.
Cavalier rolled out 23 feet of string so the students could see this amazing length, and it took Cavalier, DelBaccio and students Erika Hankavich and Gregory Margione to properly hold the string taut.
After Cavalier answered questions and played a game of “Body Bingo” with the third-graders, the students better understood how their body works and how to take care of it.
“They’re important lessons to learn,” said DelBaccio as the presentation ended. “Through science, the kids don’t just learn about the world around them. They learn about what’s happening inside their own bodies, too.”