THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM:
Finding the heart using a stethoscope on the interactive whiteboard: This one is a great way of remembering the location of the heart. They move the stethoscope about until they can hear the heart beating.
The children did an experiment to see the effect of exercise on their hearts. This involved sitting, standing, running/dancing and hopping. Of course they loved this! Click here or on the image below to download my heart investigation sheet.
After having experimented on themselves, they then had a go at changing Ruby's heart rate in this fantastic game from the BBC Schools website. It was a great assessment tool. I asked them to make Ruby's heart rate go up/down a little or a lot.
I found a huge selection of heart-related resources on the American Heart Association website. They have heart lesson plans divided up by subject and age level. Here, I came across this join the dots activity where the children follow the route of blood through the heart.
THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM:
After this, we moved on to learning about the lungs. Mr. Hardy's simple flash animation shows the movements in the respiratory system very clearly. Having watched this, we then set out to make models of the lungs. I followed these instructions except we used plasticine instead of clay.
At the end of the lesson, the children watched this video to summarise. Again, there is a simple animation with commentary (not in the clearest English though!). This provided more detail in a visual way.
The children also designed anti-smoking posters. I found it very difficult to find classroom resources relating to the dangers of smoking that would be suitable for children who are that young. Quite a lot of the posters, videos, etc. were very gruesome. I thought this was a nice little animation to show how smoking affects the teeth, lungs, heart and brain in a not-so-gruesome manner. One word of warning - the brain is a bit scary!
Love these ideas, thanks a mil! I will defo be trying some of these out in the future!
ReplyDeleteWould love if you would check out my blog at www.seniorinfant.blogspot.ie/.
Thanks SJ. I just had a look at your blog there - it's great! I really like those blazing suns! Sounds like your infants have a great command of the aul gaeilge too! Always great to see!
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