Hi Everyone,

I have my schtick down for 8th grade and High School Career Days but I'm participating in one for 4th and 5th graders next week. Any ideas of what kind of things to bring to show the little guys and talk about?

Becky

We have a long standing program here for kindergarten children. The lab portion includes a walk through of what is involved in a blood collection with all of the equipment visible, jars containing red liquid with the amount in the jar representing how much blood is in the body of an adult, child, and newborn. A microscope to show what is on a blood smear is always a hit. Path specimens in a container are usually either "Oh gross!" or "cool!" depending upon the individual. Hope this is of some help.

I did something like this a few years back. I approached it as an opportunity to get kids interested in the health care profession. Here are a few things I did (based on me being a blood banker):

1) I got into my PPE, lab coat, gloves, face shield (goggles) so they could see how I work all day

2) I asked them if any of them knew their own blood type, and what was the universal blood type

3) I brought in old CAP kodachromes and projected them to show blood and micro specimens

4) I talked about all of the many places where a degree in health sciences could take them

a) Lab Sciences: Micro, Chem, Serology, Hem, BB, Molecular Biology

Marine Micro

c) Food Micro

d) Public Health

e) Medical school

5) I talked about many of the places where a degree in MIcro(health sciences) had a part if discovering recent health outbreaks:

a) Ebola Virus

Toxic Shock Syndrome

c) HIV (AIDS)

d) E. Coli toxicity

e) H1N1 outbreak

f) Mad cow disease

As I asked questions, I gave out a little two-pack oreo cookie to anyone who participated. That went over really well.

Good luck

I used to take a unit of expired blood and one of thawed plasma, well wrapped in zip lock bags, to show them the red blood cells and plasma they often have studied at this age. Then I talk to them about some people not being able to make enough blood or bleeding so they need other people to share some of their blood. I talked about how much a donor could share without it hurting them and how it helped the patient. And of course, the teacher asked me if I was a phlebotomist.