Human Body - Week 5 - The Heart

Week 5: We built a stethoscope and made a model of the circulatory system.

Our heart is about the size of our fist and pumps blood throughout our bodies without ever growing tired. This week we covered several pages in David Macaulay's The Way We Work book and created some exciting activities to go along with the book.

To do these projects and activities we used:
a large roll of paper
markers
glue
red and blue yarn
red, white and blue fabric
cotton stuffing
needle and thread
paper towel roll
tape
top portion of a plastic funnel shaped container

Each kid worked on a different aspect of the project. My son, a budding engineer, worked on the stethoscope. I saw a similar project on Science Sparks and decided to give it a try. He created several different models. Each contained a tube in the middle and cone shape to be placed on the chest.

Our main project was a model of the circulatory system. We traced Jemma since she fit best on the large paper. Then she was given a face, and the veins and arteries (red and blue yarn) were glued into place.

The oldest sewed a simple model of the heart and lungs. She had to create four chambers: right atrium, right ventricle, left atrium and left ventricle. The chambers on the right side were blue as that is where blood enters the heart and the chambers on the left receive oxygenated blood returning from the heart and were therefore red. The lungs were made from white fabric cut into ovals.

After the heart was glued into place large veins and arteries were added so that blood could travel between the lungs and the heart.

Next the veins and arteries were connected to the heart. As they got closer to the heart they joined together to create larger veins and arteries.

When blood reaches the extremities the blood vessels branch into smaller and smaller pipes called capillaries. We added capillaries to the hands and feet of our model by separating the yarn into smaller strands.

When the model was complete we talked about how unlike our other muscles, the heart muscle never gets tired. The kids made fists and repeatedly squeezed them until they were tired of doing so. We learned how to take a pulse and increase the heart rate through exercise.

To see move of our human body activities please visit our science page. There are many more human body activities coming. You can receive email notification of new posts by signing up to follow by email on the right-hand side of the blog.

This post is linked to:
Link and Learn
Science Sunday
TGIF Linky
Homeschool Showcase
We Made That Wednesday 
Weekly Kids Co-op 

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