Pinkerton Elementry

This six weeks we had the privilege of going to Pinkerton Elementary and helping third graders dissect a cow’s eye and a sheep’s heart. It was so much fun to see the kids reaction to the eye and heart, and to hear what they thought about the dissections. While we were cutting open the eye the kids would ask about the cow and how we got its eye. They wondered if someone had found the cow eye and that is why we had it, or if it had just fallen out of the cows skull. We explained to the kids that the cow had died and that all its body parts had been donated to science so that we could do cool things like dissect it for them. They were fascinated with the eye. When we opened up the eye the kids got really excited to see what the inside of an eye looked like. We explained and pointed out what all the different parts of the eye were, and even let the kids hold the eye.

When we opened the sheeps heart the third graders were more timid to touch the heart than the eye. They asked all kinds of questions like where all the blood went, and why there wasn’t any blood in the heart when we cut it open. It was really interesting to hear the questions they asked. They were fascinated when we explained the different chambers of the heart and I could tell they were thinking of their own hearts when we talked about the different parts of the sheep’s heart. In the end we asked them how they could keep their hearts healthy and they gave us all sorts of answers, from eating healthy to exercising. I think the third graders really benefited from our visit because they got to see and learn about not only a sheep's heart and cow’s eye but their own hearts and eyes too.