RESOURCE

Pre-visit Activity: “Am I Alive?” Program

5 Senses Exploration

Head outside with your students
Sit/lie down in a circle:
- Close our eyes, focus on your breathing.
- What do we hear? What can we feel/touch? What do we smell? Can we taste anything on our tongues, does the air have a taste?
  - We can ask these questions and have the children out loud, or it can be a silent reflection.
- Open your eyes. What do we see?
- Can we move our toes, arms, arms, legs, ears? Individually and all at once.
Stand up
- Move quickly (in whatever direction and capacity) for 5 minutes.
- Bring the children back together. How do we feel now? What do we notice?
- These last two sections could be completed a few times over.

Heart beats

Can we take our heart beat? What is our heartbeat?
Teach the children to put their hand on their chest, wrist, and neck to check for a heart beat.
See if they can count their own heartbeat over 10 second intervals. NOTE: If your students do not have the ability to count yet, we can simply observe the way we feel and the general “speed” of the heart beat.
- As a teacher you say “start counting” wait 10 seconds, and then “stop counting”
  - With this number you can then multiply it by six. That is your beats per minute (bpm).
- The result of this exercise does not need to be accurate but rather is to bring awareness to its change.
Have the students run around again, or dance (a great in-classroom movement), try the activity again, have the students lie or sit for a minute, get them to try the activity again.
Talk about why our heart rate changes. What would it mean if we had no heartbeat?
Average human heart rate is 70 beats per minute. Do we think all animals have a pulse? Do the smaller animals have a higher heart rate? What about larger animals?
Do all living things have a heartbeat? Example, a tree? Moss? A river? (this does not need to be answered necessarily at this time, just to prompt the children before heading to Camp Kawartha.