What better time is there than St.Valentine's Day to teach your students about how the human heart really works? Whether your students are preschoolers or high-schoolers, you're sure to find a site here that will unlock for them a mystery of the heart. Included: A dozen great sites for Valentine's Day.
Did you know that…
The human heart beats about 100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year, and two and a half billion times in an average lifetime.
The average heart pumps more that a gallon of blood a minute.
A kid's heart is about the size of a fist. An adult's heart is the size of two fists.
In the United States, about 2,000 people a day die of heart disease.
You'll find those facts and many others at one of the heart-related Web sites below.
Electric Heart
This companion site to the 1999 Nova program "The Electric Heart" offers a number of features that teachers and students will love to learn from. Those include a Map of the Human Heart, Amazing Heart Facts, and an interactive lesson on How to Transplant a Heart in 19 Easy Steps.
The Heart: An Online Exploration
The Franklin Institute Online offers this interactive tour of the human heart that includes discussions of its structure, function, and development. The site also provides tips for keeping your heart healthy as well as a look at the history of heart science. Kids will love the look and readability of the exhibit, while educators will find the Enrichment Activities and Resource Materials extremely helpful.
The Heart and the Circulatory System
Part of Access Excellence, "a national educational program that provides high school health and biology teachers access to … critical sources of new scientific information via the World Wide Web," this site includes an explanation of heart anatomy and a discussion of the history of scientific study of the heart, as well as Heart Activities, Heart Resources, and a Heart Glossary for classroom use.
How Your Heart Works
In typical How Stuff Works fashion, this site offers probably the most complete discussion of the workings of the human heart. This site explains not just heart anatomy -- with clearly labeled diagrams -- but also the heart's electrical system, blood flow and blood supply, and much more. Included are links to even more information, including information on heart disease and heart health.
Open Heart
This site, developed by the Columbus (Ohio) Medical Association provides hands-on, activity-based lessons about the human heart. Explore heart anatomy by assembling a heart; find out about heart disease by diagnosing and "treating" heart, patients; learn about heart health by making life style choices. This site is fun without being frivolous or distracting; kids will forget they're learning.
For more great sites, visit the Education World Site Reviews Archives.
Article by Linda Starr
Education World®
Copyright © 2007 Education World
02/11/2004
Links Updated 12/04/2007
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