Jump For Heart a success

MEEKER — Throughout February, Debbie Cook’s health and physical education classes took an exciting and informative journey into the human heart.
The units start with each child receiving his/her American Heart Association sponsorship packets. Meeker elementary school students learned how they could keep their hearts healthy by taking three easy steps: move around enough, eat healthy stuff and live tobacco-free.
Their pledge to their sponsors was that they would adopt this lifestyle to help fight heart disease and stroke which are the No. 1 and No. 3 killers in the United States.
The next step in the journey was an obstacle course which took each student on the route the blood takes through the heart into the lungs then through the whole body.
Dr. Stacey Hudelson gave an excellent demonstration of how the heart and lungs work together by bringing in hearts and lungs from steers and dissecting them for the fourth- and fifth-graders to see firsthand.
Perry Moyle from the American Heart Association gave a presentation Feb. 13 which graphically demonstrated the danger of too many fats in our diets. He also stunned our students by telling them some of the deadly things in cigarettes.
On Feb. 14, every student at Meeker Elementary participated in a jump-a-thon, which raised $11,424 for the American Heart Association. We are very proud of all of our jumpers and our whole community, which donated money for this wonderful event.
Not only did the contributions help raise money for the American Heart Association, it also helped buy equipment for the Meeker Elementary physical education and health classes. We would like to thank everyone for their support.