Preschoolers learn anatomy with hands-on experience

NORWALK — Paging the "student doctors" in Keri Zendejas' class. Paging the "student doctors" … As the preschoolers at the Norwalk Catholic School Early Childhood Center marched through the school in their gowns and masks, the kitchen workers were impressed. They not only "ooh'd" and "ah'd," they said the children were "so spiffy" and "looked so serious." "They look so professional," one woman said. Each of the 4- and 5-year-olds had stethoscopes hung from their necks; they held a clipboard with confidential information about their "patients." Clipped to their surgery gowns were laminated name tags with the preschoolers' name and photo, declaring they were "student doctors." "Confidential means you can't tell anybody about your patient; it's a secret," Zendejas told her students once they arrived in a classroom set up for "surgery." The students rotated through assigned stations. One focused on organ transplants, where the children used tongs to grab a felt, colored organ from a cooler and placed it on the diagram of a body. Nearby, their classmates matched laminated illustrations of bones with their locations. At another table, the students had a snack and played "Body Parts Bingo." Next it to it was a table where the preschoolers signed and colored a get-well card for patients at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "I saw a picture on Facebook about a week-and-a-half ago and said, 'This is something I have to do in my classroom,'" said Zendejas, who already had planned "a big unit on the body." "God has a way of making things happen — yup." Fisher-Titus Medical Center in Norwalk, Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky and several doctors donated supplies for the preschoolers to use, including IV stands where two baby dolls were undergoing "surgery." "It took a lot of time. We had other stations planned and I had to decide which ones I wanted to do because we only a 2 1/2-hour allotment to get everything done," Zendejas said. Julie Fox, a registered nurse at Fisher-Titus Medical who works in surgery, was in the classroom to observe — and answer the occasional question from the students, their teacher or the teacher assistants. The Norwalk woman said it's not just a great educational experience, but hopefully will put the students more at ease just in case they go to the hospital since they will recognize some of the supplies. "It's a wonderful experience for the kids to learn the basics of health care in an environment that is calm and fun, so that if they would have to anything done, it seems it would be a lot less scary to them," Fox said. "I was very impressed listening to her (Zendejas) discuss with the kids the things that they had learned and the level that they had learned it on, about their bodies and the different systems. So she's done an amazing job in teaching these kids." Fox said this experience "absolutely" will give these preschoolers an advantage when they study anatomy later and maybe "starts them to a career down the road, so it's wonderful." The preschoolers were serious as they accomplished their goals at each station. "I think they are really surprised doing the operation on the babies, having the real supplies that were donated. They liked putting the skeleton back together and they like doing the organ transplants. I think the one I like the best is making the cards for St. Jude's hospital," Zendejas said. Like Fox, she hopes this anatomy unit will help them in future science classes. "I hope so; I hope they're going to say, 'Hey, I remember when my preschool teacher talked about this,'" she added with a laugh.