“We had a blast over at the Summer Fun Program yesterday!” commented Tricia McGean, RN – the Community Nurse for Town of Carlisle, Board of Health.
The Summer Fun program is local Carlisle summer program. Friends can spend weekly sessions together full of activities that include taking advantage of the great outdoors of Carlisle. As an added activity on Tuesday, July 23 our Community Nurse – Tricia McGean, RN, brought along some special visitors for a unique outdoor education session.
Tricia reported, “We had about 30 kids, ranging in age from 5-10. First, we talked about ticks and they had A LOT to say about them and they told me stories of their experiences with ticks”. Some of the kids stories:
“I had a tick crawling up my leg. My mom put me in the shower and we watched it float down the drain.”
“My dad had a tick on him and it was gross and fat. My mom used tweezers to get it out. It was on his head!”
“My mom had Lyme Disease from a tick bite. She has a big garden and told me that was where the tick found her.”
“My brother cried when my mom was trying to pull off a tick. It was near his ear and could have crawled in there. Ewwwweee!!”
Tricia passed around poppy seed bagel to show the kids the size of nymph ticks and a sesame bagel to show them the size of the adult ticks. They were surprised how small they were. As part of the educations session the Community Nurse reminded them that they should be “on Tick Patrol every night to check their bodies for ticks” and to “ask an adult to help them with the hard to see places”.
After some general Tick education, the group moved on to the ‘hands- on’ part of the session. With the help of some special Teddy Bear volunteers. Tricia used small turquoise rhinestones to represent ticks and hid them in the Teddy Bears fur.
The kids worked in groups to find 5 hidden ticks on each volunteer Teddy Bear. Then pass the bear onto the next group. Tricia said the kids loved it and wanted to keep the bears! The group then moved on to sun safety. At the end of the session, Tricia got lots of positive responses from the kids; “This is so fun. Can we do this tomorrow?” “This is the best activity we have ever done.” “Can you come back?”
