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Have a Heart!
Celebrate Valentine's Day
Across the Curriculum

On Valentine's Day, as on most other in-school holidays, excited students can create a classroom atmosphere that wreaks havoc with the learning process. Don't fight it! Join in the spirit -- with activities that celebrate the day without sacrificing instruction.

It's Valentine's Day, and your high-spirited students are more concerned with how many cards they've received -- and from whom -- than with the number of elements in the periodic table or with memorizing multiplication tables. Have a heart! Help them celebrate the day with these "heart-y" activities.

Need a "quick-tivity?" Ask your students to think of as many compound words containing the word heart that they can.

A brief description of each activity appears below. Click any headline for a complete teaching resource!

Circulatory System Travel Brochures
Students create brochures describing a trip through the human circulatory system. (Grades 6-12)

Build an Oxygen Plant
Students create models of an oxygen-delivery system and relate it to the function of the human circulatory system. (Grades 6-12)

Heart Art
Students make Valentine mobiles. (Grades K-5)

A Knife to the Heart
Students investigate the history of heart surgery and create a time line showing the most important breakthroughs in cardiac medicine. (Grades 6-12)

Run the Circulatory System Relay
Students participate in a relay race through the circulatory system. (Grades 6-12)

The Heartbreaking Puzzle
Students assemble and reassemble pieces from a heart-shaped puzzle to form a variety of geometric shapes. (Grades 3-8)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Heart: An Online Exploration
The Franklin Museum Online provides this tour of the human heart.

Collection of Murmurs, Defects and Others
Sounds of healthy and abnormal heartbeats.

Article by Linda Starr
Education World®
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