5 Lessons of the Heart

Put a twist on your Valentine’s lessons with these heart-themed, science lessons, activities, and free downloads. They go beyond the mushy-gushy romance of V-day...although, we're not against that (see Secret Valentine Exchange)! Plus February is American Heart Month, so you can use these activities all month long to promote heart health awareness.

Getting to Know the Heart
Familiarize students with the parts of the heart with this free labeling activity from our Labeling for Comprehension Series. Students will read a short description of the heart, and then demonstrate their understanding by labeling the diagram. Now, they are ready to get their blood flowing with the next two activities.

A Blood-Pumping Graphing Activity
Integrate math, health, and heart-healthy science with this blood-pumping activity. Students will graph their heart rates while doing different activities.

1. Ask students, “Did you know that your heart is a muscle? In fact, it is the only hollow muscle in your body. Like all the muscles in your body, your heart stays strong when it exercises. Let’s see how exercise makes your heart work and keep strong.”

2. Have students find their pulse while sitting at their desks (resting heart rate). Have each student gently press their forefingers to their wrist, near the base of the thumb. Have them count the pulses while you keep time for 15-seconds. Then each student should multiply their count by four to get the beats-per-minute.  Have students write this number in this chart (free download).

3. Complete the chart together as a class. After each activity, have students take their pulse. You’ll be in charge of the clock, tracking the intervals, and making sure students stay on-task. When you are done, have students create a bar graph or line graph to show how their heart rate differed for each activity.

4. Explain to students that blood is a special “belt” that brings oxygen to the muscles and carries the bad away, and you want your heart to be in its best shape to do this well.

A Field Trip Through the Heart
Good News! This field trip does not require a permission slip. Students will take a trip through the heart right in your classroom.

• With tape, draw a large diagram (click here to download) of the heart on our classroom floor. This diagram includes a station for the lungs and body cells.
• Label the chambers of the heart, the lungs, the body cells, and all blood vessels accordingly.
• Place large blue circle cutouts in the body cells and large red circle cutouts in the lungs.
• Have a small group of students be the “blood” moving along the route through each station like blood flowing through the heart.
• Have two students be the “lungs” in the lung station.
• Have a few students act as the “body cells” in the body cells station.
• Narrate what the blood is doing as the students go through each stop.
• Explain what blood vessel they must take.
• As students reach the body cells station, have students exchange their red circles (blood cells carrying oxygen) for blue circles (blood cells carrying carbon dioxide).
• As students pass through the lungs, have them exchange their blue cells for red cells, which illustrates the diffusion of oxygen into the blood. Point out that blood vessels carrying blood away from the heart are arteries, and usually carry red blood.  Blood vessels carrying blood towards the heart are veins, and usually carry blue blood.
• Also point out that the right side of the heart handles blue blood and the left side of the heart handles red blood.

Tip: To really reinforce the lesson, have a different group of students take a trip through the heart, while another set of students narrate the journey.

Use these free worksheets <free download> before students take a trip through the heart to give a little background knowledge of the heart and cardiovascular system. These worksheets come from our The Human Body: Digestive, Circulatory, Reproductive, & Excretory Systems book.

Secret Valentine Exchange
Finish your heart-throbbing unit with a Secret Valentine Exchange. This activity is still science-focused while incorporating language skills.

1. Put every student’s name in a bag, and have each student draw a name from the bag.

2. Have students color and decorate this free heart template using red and blue crayons, construction paper, or magazine clippings to properly indicate where the red and blue blood cells flow.

3. On the back of each heart ask to students “pour their hearts out” to their Secret Valentine using heart-themed idioms or proverbs, such as: heart pumping, change of heart, heart misses a beat, heart bleeds, with a heavy heart, eat your heart out, from the bottom of my heart…etc.

Use this opportunity to encourage students to work on their handwriting, poetry, and/or creative writing skills. On V-day, have students share their heart (pun intended) with the whole class and reveal who and why they think their Secret Valentine has a heart of gold.

Freebies from the American Heart Association
Check out The American Heart Association who makes a variety of educational lessons, posters, activities, and other great freebies to support your heart lessons.

7 Get-Up-&-Move Math Activities

Maybe you want to promote a healthier classroom by getting your students up and moving through an activity, maybe your students are more tactile learners, or maybe you find that if your students are active they are more focused and well-behaved throughout the rest of the day. Whatever your motivation, we've got some "active" math games to get your students up and moving... Plus you don't even have to leave the classroom!

Bowling Math
Get an inexpensive bowling kit from the toy section and set up a lane or two in your classroom. On the bottom of each pin write numbers (depending on your student's level make the numbers as small or large as you'd like). Have students take turns rolling the ball down to the pins. After one student rolls the ball down to the pins, have that student walk, lunge, or skip down to the pins. Have that student add up the numbers on the bottom of their pins--that's their score for that round. If you'd rather not keep score, just have students work the math problem. They can either add, subtract, or multiply all of the numbers or just the two largest numbers.

Active Stations
As students make their way through your normal math stations, have them do lunges, crab walking, or wheel barrels to get to the next station. 

Bean Bag Toss
Use these simple instructions (from Dirt & Boogers Blog) to make your own Bean Bag Toss easily and with very few materials. Adjust the design with a few extra holes to make this game educational. Simply cut several holes into the box and label each hole with a number. Give students a math equation and have them toss the bean bag into the hole with the correct answer.  Or assign word problems to each number. Whichever hole the bean bag lands in, that is the word problem the student must answer.

Holiday Gift Guide for Teachers

It can be hard to compete with those adorable student-made gifts that the teacher in your life will inevitably get this holiday season. But we’ve gathered 12 exceptional gifts sure to please your special teacher whether he or she is your co-worker, friend...or yourself.

1. Comfy Shoes
It’s no surprise, teachers are on their feet all day! Treat them to a stylish and comfortable pair of shoes. Like these Crocs™.

2. Cup Sleeve
Fueling up with hot coffee or tea is a must. Show your favorite teacher some love with an adorable Coffee Cozy from Catherine Mason. Starting at $10.

3. One-Year Subscription to edWorksheets.com
A membership to edWorksheets.com gives teachers a year of unlimited math, reading, writing, and science worksheet downloads for only $49.95.

5 Gift-Themed Activities

‘Tis the seasons for celebrations and gift giving! It's easy to make this generous season part of your math, writing, science, and thinking lessons with these tips. Plus students will love giving and receiving these gift-themed activities.

Gift Stations ~ Math
Fill several different size boxes with random dollar store gifts and wrap them or use the dollar store gift boxes--no wrapping necessary. Then, put the gifts at different gift stations: one station for measuring, one for weighing, and one for word problems. Split students into groups and rotate them through each gift station. Have students work together to answer the questions you’ve left at each gift station.

Word Problems Gift Station: Tape a word problem to the bottom of each gift. Ask students solve one or all of the problems on each gift. Or to further challenge your students, ask them to determine which gift is the largest or heaviest, and then have them only answer the word problem on the bottom of that gift.

Measurement Gift Station: Ask students to measure each box’s width, height, length and determine which is the largest, smallest, and tallest gift.

Weight Gift Station: Do the same as the Measurement Stations with weight related questions.

Celebrity Gift ~ Writing
Because gift giving is so special, it should take a lot of thought and planning. Ask students to think about what they might give to their favorite celebrity or character from a book. They can pick the celebrity or have students pick one person from list. Then have write about the gift they would give. Ask student to describe the gift and why they chose it for that person.

Celebrity Suggestions: Santa Clause, the President, Walter Payton, J.K. Rowling, Miley Cyrus, One Direction, Bart Simpson, Justin Timberlake, Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games).

For more inspiration and mini biographies to help students know what to choose as a gift, have students read any one of our Celebrity Readers stories.

Encouraging Grit & Perseverance in Your Students

There is a lot of buzz about teaching students "grit." The word is gaining excitement and controversy, and no matter where you stand on the debate, it's hard to deny that encouraging students to have grit and perseverance can't be a bad thing. The idea of "grit" is like when if you fall off your bike, you pick yourself up, and get back on the bike. If we can instill this value in students who struggle in math, reading, or any other subject, just think how far they could go.
 
If you're interested in helping your students gain some grit and perseverance, you're going to have to put in some effort. Sometimes through the pounding over the head method of teaching and sometimes with a bit more subtlety. Because unfortunately, you can't teach these traits in one single lesson plan with a quiz and letter grade at the end. So we have compiled some suggestions on how to instill some tenacity in your students. 
 

Verbal Encouragement
Instead of general praise (i.e. you're so smart), recognize a student's performance based on their effort. Try saying, "Great job on that test! The time you spent after class reviewing really paid off." Students need to understand how their efforts effect their outcome, whether it be success or failure.

Resist the Urge to Offer Hints
Letting students struggle a little to answer a question will be a hard task for both you and your students. However doing this not only teaches them that it's okay to not always know the answer, as it's an opportunity to learn, but it also lets them become comfortable with the struggle. Just because it's not easy, isn't a reason to quit and give up.