Walking through the body

What Zach Gates wanted to know at the Body Walk at Bordewich-Bray Elementary School was how a 20-foot intestine fit into his elementary school-size body.

"It kind of collapses like this," Michele Cowee, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator, told Zach and his fifth-grade classmates as she flattened a 20-foot, thin rope over her stomach. "It's fits right here."

Bordewich-Bray students had a chance to learn more about the human body at the school's Body Walk Thursday and Friday in the auditorium.

"Every year, we try to do this," Cowee said. "It's fun. It just gives us the chance to go over some of those things you need to go over all the time and reinforce with kids, the food groups, healthy eating, good habits. Hopefully, they'll take it with them and remember."

Body Walk, at Bordewich-Bray for the third year, takes students through some of the main body parts: the mouth, esophagus, small intestine, muscles, bones, heart and lungs.

Students climb through a large cut-out wooden mouth and wiggle their way through blue tubes meant to be the esophagus and intestines.

"It's something different than listening to a regular teacher," said PE teacher Linda Hurzel. "It's visual. Kids can see it."

Over at the heart booth, State Health Division dietitian Barbara Howe listened to fifth-grade student Cody Radford's heart, inviting students to clap along to the beat as it increased as he jumped up and down.

"The heart is like a pump," she said. "It takes blood out through your arteries, down to the toes, then brings it back again."

Nearby, Suzanne Peckham, a parent-teacher association member, talked with students about their lungs.

"Take a deep breath in," she said.

Everyone inhaled and then let it out.

"Do you know that if you didn't have healthy pink lungs, you wouldn't be able to do that?" she said. "One of the best things to do for your body is not smoke."

Lighting a match, she placed it inside a glass jar to show how the sulfur blackened the inside.

"This is what happens to your lungs if you smoke," she said.

Fifth-grader Skylar Van Rensselaer listened carefully to Peckham and to all the speakers. He wants to keep his body in shape by exercising and avoiding drugs and cigarettes.

"Being healthy can help you live longer and have a healthy body so you won't have to be a couch potato one day," he said.

n Contact reporter Maggie O'Neill at moneill@nevadaappeal.com

or 881-1219.