What Makes Air Go In and Out?
| Objective: | to
describe what makes air go in and out of the lungs
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| Student Information: | Your lungs do not have muscles.
You breathe by changing the size of your chest. The air around you has
pressure. It is pushing in on you all of the time. When you make your chest
bigger, air comes into your body and fills up your lungs. To breathe out,
you make your chest smaller. This pushes the air back out.
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| Materials: |
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| Procedure: | 1. Fill the bottle half
way with colored water. Put the straw in it and place the clay over the
opening (holding the straw in place coming out of the bottle).
2. Tell the children that the straw is like your windpipe; the clay is like your throat; the bottle is like your chest. The movement of the colored water is to represent the movement of air in and out of your lungs. 3. Push in on the bottle. This makes the bottle smaller. This is like making your chest smaller. This pushes the water (air) out. 4. Stop pushing in on the
bottle. This makes the bottle bigger. This is like making your chest bigger.
Air pressure pushes the water (air) in.
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| Assessment: | Discussion:
Put your hands on your chest while you breathe. Can you feel how changing the size of your chest makes the air go in and out? How is it like the bottle? |
Measuring Your Lung Capacity (Math Activity)
| Objectives: |
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| Materials:
Student Information: |
For each pair of students:
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| Procedures: | 1. Divide students into
pairs and ask them to think of a way that we could measure the amount of
air our lungs can hold. (If they are having trouble, hold up a balloon
and let them make the connection.)
2. Explain that they will be measuring their lung capacity (amount something can hold) using balloons. To show the size of one person's lung capacity in comparison with another's you will be measuring how big around the balloon gets. 3. Demonstrate how to measure the circumference of a balloon that you've blown up with the string and then how you measure the amount of string used with a ruler. (It's best to pick a partner to demonstrate this so that the children understand the role of both people on a team.) 4. Go over the recording sheet with them explaining that in each of the 5 tries they will make a guess or estimate first and then actually blow up the balloon with one breath and measure it. Partners will take turns helping the other. 5. Take a poll of how many students think that their guesses will get better with every try. 6. Discussion: Give
each student an opportunity to tell his/her lung capacity. Follow up pre-measuring
poll by asking students how close their guesses were in the beginning and
how close they were on try #5.
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| Assessment: | Students write letters to
another class giving directions on how to find your lung capacity. They
should include problems they may have had and the solutions they came up
with to help!
Bulletin Board: Tie off each balloon and tack it to the bulletin board with a label stating the child's name and lung capacity. |
Musical Breathing (Music Activity)
| Objective: |
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| Materials: |
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| Procedures:
Student Information: |
1. Display pictures
of wood and brass instruments (French horn, trumpet, tuba, trombone, flute,
bassoon, oboe, clarinet, etc.).
2. Invite older students to demonstrate how they breathe when playing the instruments. 3. Provide harmonicas,
penny whistles, recorders, and kazoos and challenge students to perform
a tune.
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| Assessment: | Students describe orally what differences they noticed between regular breathing and breathing to play a tune. |
To Breathe or Not to Breathe (Art and Social Studies Activity)
| Objective: | to identify things that
aid or hinder breathing
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| Materials: |
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| Procedures:
Student Information: |
Have students cut out pictures
and ads from magazines to make a scrapbook. Pictures and ads can have anything
to do with lungs and oxygen, including cold and cough remedies, air pollution,
smoking, and so on.
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| Assessment: | Students meet in small groups
to compare the things that they found to aid or hinder breathing.
Journal Entry: Students propose solutions to the things that they found that hinder breathing. |
Mystery Riddles (Language Arts Activity)
| Objective: | to recall knowledge about
the heart, lungs, oxygen, blood vessels, carbon dioxide
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| Procedures:
Student Information: |
Have students make up riddles
about the heart, lungs, oxygen, blood vessels, carbon dioxide or any other
body concept that's been covered. You may wish to provide a model, such
as:
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| Assessment: | Have students present the riddles to a small group or to the class. Give other students the opportunity to guess and tell why they chose their answer. |
Aerobics (Physical Education Activity)
| Objective: | to identify the difference
between aerobic and anaerobic exercise
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| Materials: |
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| Procedures:
Student Information: |
1. Talk to the students
about how different exercises feel when you do them. Elicit the response
that some make you breathe harder than others and make your heart beat
faster. Tell them that those exercises are aerobic and those that don't
require faster intake of oxygen are anaerobic.
2. As a class, brainstorm things that are anaerobic activities. Try some of them as a group. 3. Have the students write down how they felt doing those activities. 4. Play the aerobics video and follow along as a group. 5. Students should write
again, this time explaining how they feel different after that type of
exercise.
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| Assessment: | students' written responses |
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Questions/Comments
