Human Body: Learning About the Heart

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We have been learning so many fascinating facts about the human body. Recently my co-op class of K-2nd graders learned about the heart.

This hands-on model of  the heart came from Scholastic's Human Body Project Book.

We learned that the heart is a muscle--a very strong muscle! Though from pictures the heart looks solid, it actually has four chambers or "rooms".

Free Heart House Printable from Spell Outloud

The heart pumps blood throughout the body through these chambers.Oxygen-poor blood comes into the right side of the heart. From there it is pumped to the lungs, where it picks up oxygen and returns to the heart’s left side and is pumped out to the body.

It gets a little confusing--especially for younger children to understand oxygen-poor blood and oxygen-rich blood flow -- and how it moves through the body via veins, arteries and blood vessels. This hands-on printable gave the kids an idea of how blood moves through the body. This project was also in Scholastic's Human Body Projects Book.

Edible Heart Model from Apologia Anatomy Book

Our class joined the older group and we all made edible heart models. The directions for this experiment are listed in the Apologia Anatomy book. The blobs of pink and blue are white food coloring dyed as close to red and dark blue as we could get. This was a messy project but the kids loved it!

Before eating, we talked about the four "rooms" of the heart and their names. We also reviewed how oxygen-poor blood enters the heart and it is sent to the lungs to pick up some more oxygen. The oxygen-rich blood is pumped out to the rest of the body.

Other Heart Activities:
* We took our resting pulse. Then the kids ran around the gym for several minutes. We took our pulse after all the exercise. We discussed our results.

* We made stethoscopes out of toilet paper tubes. They worked ok. Next time we will make the stethoscope with plastic tubing and a funnel (directions in the Apologia Book pg 147)

* My kids love when I add a video to the lesson. We watched the Schoolhouse Rock video on Circulation:

We also watched this short video on the chambers of the heart:

You can see what we’ve done so far by visiting the Human Body Page. Linking up to Science Sunday too.

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