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5 May

2nd class have been learning all about our bodies in science.

After chatting in our pairs about what we thought our hearts did, we then examined our wrists to find veins.

Some of us thought they were blue, some purple and some green. When we held them over our heads for a minute they started to feel cold and numb. We thought maybe that’s because it was harder for the blood to get to it when it was up so high.

Then we looked at finding our pulses. Some of us had seen in movies how doctors and medics check pulses, but we had never done it ourselves. We found that we couldn’t use our thumbs because they had their own sort of pulse which was just too confusing!

When we were able to find our pulse, we worked in partners to count it. A very clever girl in our class suggested that we could find out how many there were in a minute by counting how many there were in 30 seconds and then doubling that amount. We’re pretty good at doubling big numbers, so we gave it a go.

Sometimes it was hard to find so we thought about where else we might feel the blood pumping around our bodies too.

After we we had recorded our ‘resting heart rate’, we worked in groups to brainstorm how our heart rate might speed up or slow down. We thought maybe sleeping, resting or sitting for a while would keep it slow. We also thought that activities like football, running, eating, talking lots and dancing would speed it up. So we moved outside on this beautiful sunny day to do some exercise!

After 2 big running laps and a few star jumps, we counted our pulse again for 30 seconds and doubled it to find our heart rate for 1 minute.

We were amazed to find how much faster it was. We noticed that we had to count a lot quicker! We went inside and 5 minutes later we checked our pulses again and they were much closer to our original resting pulse.

We then graphed our results using bar charts. We looked at our results and found that the middle bar was much higher and then it went back down after exercise.

We thought it was funny how some of us hadn’t gone down to the exact same heart rate as we started with. We had two thoughts about this, firstly maybe we weren’t counting exactly right and secondly, maybe that meant we weren’t as fit as we should be! We asked Ms. Boland if that meant we should do more P.E. everyday!

Our conclusion was that exercise increases heart rate. We thought maybe the rest of our body needed more blood to help it when it was busy!

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