I Heart You

In honor of Valentine's Day, Mrs. Melissa shared a fun lesson this week about our heart & what it does for our body. What a fun idea!We started with a really neat 3D book about our body. Everyone saw where, on a body, the heart is located. They were also very interested in the brain & bones!

Next, Mrs. Melissa pulled out her Medical Bag. Unfortunately, their family needs a kit full of medical equipment to care for a sick kiddo. But, it was great to have a real stethescope to listen to heartbeats with. The Fisher Price play doctor kit only works so well. But the real deal? The kids LOVED hearing their own heartbeats. As they listened to their hearts, Melissa asked each one "What does your heart say? What does it sound like?" The common answer was some version of thump, thump, thump. When she asked Reese, he said "Hi. I'm a heart!".

Then Melissa pulled out a heart rate monitor that slips over your finger. We went around the circle & took each child's resting heart rate. Then everyone jogged in place & measured their active heart rate. Reese's heart rate went from 73 beats to 113 beats after running! Melissa took this opportunity to talk about why your heart beats faster when you exercise.

Everyone got a big piece of paper & the Moms traced the kiddlet bodies.

Then everyone cut out a heart and glued it on the traced bodies in the proper place.

Our last activity was to make heart shaped crayons from crayon shavings & chunks. Reese was very particular about having NO glitter in his crayon :)

Reese has really been into watching Schoolhouse Rock videos that Santa brought a few years ago. His favorite right now is the Body Systems segment.

On the way home from CoOp, Reese started telling me about the "white cells" that fight germs. We had a great conversation about white blood cells, red blood cells, & how each helps our bodies.

**As a side note, Blogger's spell checker isn't working STILL, so I apologize for any misspelled words!!**