The heart is arguably one of the most important organs you need in the human body to survive. It pumps blood throughout the body, supply oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, and remove carbon dioxide and other wastes.
With a simple DIY stethoscope, your kids can listen to each other’s heartbeats. This is a fun activity to learn about how to calculate the heart rate. It’s also a great activity to do with your kids before visiting a doctor to ease any nerves.
Homemade Stethoscope
Materials:
Instructions:
1. Tape the funnel to the cardboard tube.
2. Cut the balloon in half.
3. Stretch the body of the balloon over the funnel.
4. Gently place the funnel against someone’s chest to hear the heartbeat.
How did your stethoscope turn out? My kids were so excited that they could hear each other’s heartbeats. They wanted to listen to everyone’s heartbeats, even the dog was roped into this STEM activity!
You can use the stethoscope for more than listening to the heart. Try listening to other parts of the body! For example, try listening to the belly and see if you can hear gurgling as the stomach digests the latest meal.
How Do You Calculate Someone’s Heart Rate?
With technology these days, you don’t usually see nurses or doctors check heart rates manually anymore.
But your kids will get a kick out of being able to calculate the resting heart rate just by using the DIY stethoscope and a clock. This is an excellent opportunity to teach your kids counting and multiplication too!
Since your kids are probably not patient enough to count for a full 60 seconds to get the beats per minute, you can get an approximate bpm by counting for a shorter time.
For example, count the number of heartbeats in 15 seconds. Then multiply this number by four to get the beats per minute.
Or you can count how many beats you hear over 30 seconds and then multiply the number by two to get how many beats a minute.
Are your kids surprised at how fast their heart rates are? Don’t fret, the average heart rate for kids range from 80 to 120 beats per minute for children 3 to 4 years old, and 75 to 115 beats per minute for children 5 to 6 years old.
Hope your kid liked the DIY stethoscope. We had a lot of fun exploring the different heart rates for adults and kids and even our dog.
For more human anatomy activities, check out:
- Play-Doh Skeleton Activity: Importance of Bones
- How to Make Q-Tip Skeletons
- How To Make Simple Lung Model with Balloon
