The teacher at my younger daughter's preschool says that they're going to start a unit on different careers, and she asked me if I could come talk to the kids about being a doctor. Of course, I said yes.
While I did this once before for my older daughter's class many, many years ago, I feel like recently what I do has diverged significantly from what little kids think of when they think of a doctor. I still have the equipment, but I can't even remember the last time I took someone's blood pressure. (And that person was probably my husband, who is always convinced his BP is high.)
Has anyone else done a Doctor's Day for your child's class? If so, what did you do? What was a big hit?
I don't know if I can round up that many stethoscopes, but I can certainly give each kid a chance to listen with mine. Thanks for the advice :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky enough to be married to a guy who works for a science center that owns a box of stethoscopes (still with me? Sorry!) and I always borrow that and have the kids listen to their hearts. Big hit. Last time, when my kid was in 7th grade, I brought in a couple of incentive spirometers and got the biggest kid in the class (a nearly six-foot-tall boy) and the smallest (a not-quite-five-foot tall girl) to come up and use them so the class could see the difference. I talk a lot about how doctors use reading, writing and math (pitched differently for different age groups). One year I had them learn to take their pulse and then do jumping jacks and take it again. And I always take questions. When you take questions, or they say something using biological terms, ask them what they mean. If they say "cell", ask what a cell is. If they say "lung", ask what the lungs are. You'll find they use a a lot of vocabulary without real understanding. Worth exploring.
ReplyDeleteSorry, longwinded - I blame my husband, who has been working in science teaching for nearly 20 years....
This was for an older group, but FreshMD asked the same question a few years ago: http://www.mothersinmedicine.com/2012/02/s.html#comment-form
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