Smashing a few eggs on the floor of a kindergarten classroom is a good way to get the youngster?s attention and illustrate the value of bicycle safety helmets.
Doctors from the Union Hospital Emergency Department made the rounds of eleven kindergarten classrooms in the New Philadelphia School District this spring to impress the students with the importance of a bicycle safety helmet. In previous years the doctors have visited kindergarten classes in other districts in the area.
Dr. Joel Lehman, an emergency physician at
Union Hospital, with one of the 236 New Philadelphia
kindergarten students who were fitted with new
bike safety helmets donated by the ER doctors.
Pam Dummermuth, coordinator of community health and wellness for Union Hospital, described how the ER doctors use the dramatic egg smashing demonstration to make an important point with the youngsters.
?After showing how an unprotected egg will break after a short drop to the floor, another egg is encased in foam and dropped to the floor. When the egg survives intact, the importance of the safety protection is clear,? Dummermuth said.
After completing the demonstration, each student in the kindergarten class was fitted for a new bicycle safety helmet donated by the Union Hospital Emergency Physicians. Dummermuth says the ER physicians will provide 237 bike helmets, one for every kindergarten student in the New Philadelphia District.
?We?ve been presenting these programs in kindergarten classrooms around Tuscarawas County for five years now,? Dummermuth said. ?The youngsters are very receptive to the idea. They?re at the age when many of them start riding a bicycle, so it?s a great time to get them in the habit of wearing a helmet.?
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