Grades 3-5
20 activities – 150 pages

The activities in Jaw Breakers and Heart Thumpers tap students’ natural interest in learning about themselves. Explorations related to the human body include fingerprints, heartbeats, body ratios, teeth, how the feet and spine change over the course of a day, the usefulness of thumbs, and the need to replenish the body’s water supply.

Both nutritional issues as well as consumer concerns are addressed in the food investigations. Attention is drawn to food labels as aids for making wise food choices. Topics such as fats in foods, the need for breakfast, sweeteners in gum, and food dehydration are relevant to their lives and their health.

Students will love being told to chew gum in class as they compare its mass before and after it is chewed, and they will recognize the mass lost is the sweeteners ingested. They will have fun classifying their fingerprints and creating graphs and interpretations about them. And they will literally use their own head, or its circumference, to explore body proportions and how those may be different at different ages.

Along with content, students gain experience with process skills and the critical thinking necessary to continue life-long learning and problem solving. Teachers will appreciate the integration of subjects within activities as students are asked to play the role of scientists while applying mathematics in practical and meaningful situations.Grades 3-5; 20 activities – 150 pages; Can chewing gum in class really be learning? It can when students see the change in mass and realize the amount of sweeteners they ingest. Students will actively learn about their own bodies, including fingerprints, heartbeats, and toes.