Anatomy Lessons

I took Sports Medicine in high school for two years and one of my favourite parts of the class was anatomy! Although it was challenging to remember so many different names of tiny non-existent bumps on your bones, I loved knowing them and knowing what was under my skin! Last week I asked the children at Bright Future primary school what they would want us to teach them and, to my pleasant surprise, they wanted to learn about anatomy! In their own words, they wanted to learn how their heart, eyes, stomach, neck, and skin worked. My favourite was the kid who asked how your neck worked; I think I'll just talk about muscles. 

Yesterday was my first anatomy lesson and I decided to start with the heart! I found an awesome website that focuses on teaching basic anatomy to children and took most of my lesson from there. I taught them about the separate chambers and their names. Hearing little Ugandan kids saying atrium and ventricle made my day. I also taught them how blood flows through your heart and how that makes a pulse of blood throughout your body. After talking about your pulse I showed them how they could feel their pulse on their chest, neck and wrist. You have to put your finger in the right place on your wrist to actually feel a strong pulse so when I taught them that one I would walk around the classroom and fix where their finger should be. When they got their finger in the right place they would gasp after they felt the pulse! That also made my day. They are such amazing kids who have a passion for learning. I thought that this lesson might be a little challenging for the younger kids but they paid attention and then had great questions at the end! Ugandan schools don't really put an emphasis on asking questions so it's taken a while for the kids to realize when I ask if there are questions that I want them to have questions. In the older class (around 12 years old) a boy asked what would happen if one of the valves in your heart didn't close properly. They really understood the lesson and were thinking about it! It was amazing. Next week I'm teaching about the lungs. I am so happy to be teaching something that I love to kids who want to be learning about it! I am going to miss these guys.