“Taking Care of Teddy Bear”

a new methodology for teaching health education for children

Abstract

“Taking Care of the Teddy Bear” is an interdisciplinarity university extension project created in 2016, which started by conducting educational activities with children involving clinical “consultations” of stuffed animals. Observing the positive results obtained from these experiments and analyzing the need for the creation of health education methodologies for teachers, a board game called “Liga da Saúde” was created and tested with children of public school. The objective is to reduce the fear of health professionals; the construction of knowledge about SUS and the integration between school learning and health care. To this end, children are invited to form a health team to unravel the mysteries of “Ursolândia”, a city in which many teddy bears are becoming ill. Each student gets a passport (SUS card) to enter the game and a “power”, which represents one of the 4 roles of PHC professionals (doctor, nurse, health agent, and dentist). Throughout the story, the children undertake missions involving discussions about topics such as dengue, community recognition, body parts, respecting differences, environment, food, mental health, vaccination, physical activity, gender, and oral health. It was possible to realize that the knowledge was absorbed, such as the role of health agents, the preparation of homemade serum, the recognition of maps, the reading of hours on the clock, among other gains. In addition, values such as leadership and teamwork are increasingly being incorporated, such as not to compete with each other. Thus, there is an intense exchange of affection and knowledge between students and children, reinventing the art of care in health practice.