In order to conduct a thorough experiment, you will need the following items: a stopwatch, a stethoscope (optional), a pencil and small notebook for each student, and a variety of exercise equipment such as a jump rope, a hula hoop and a trampoline. This project will be conducted over the course of a week, so items should be kept where they are easily accessible without being in the way of everyday activities.
Before the students can determine whether or not exercise affects their heart rate, they must establish their resting heart rate. If you have a stethoscope available, allow each child to use it to count the number of times the heart beats within a 15-second interval. If you do not have a stethoscope, demonstrate how to use the first and second finger to find the pulse on the wrist, and have the students count the number of beats within the same 15-second interval. If the students are old enough to understand the concept of multiplication, integrate a math problem into the experiment and encourage the students to ascertain how to find the number of beats per minute when the heart rate was only measured for 15 seconds. Once the conclusion has been reached, instruct the students to record their resting heart rate (beats/minute) in their notebooks.
Allow the students to choose an exercise and have them perform that exercise for one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes, stopping between each period to test and record their heart rate. In addition to the exercises utilizing the available equipment, exercises can include walking, jogging, doing jumping jacks and dancing. Make sure the students are keeping accurate logs of their results. Repeat this process every day for the remainder of the week, urging the children to perform a different exercise each day.
During the following week, lead the students through the process of using their collected data to create a personalized line graph. Explain how the graph can show which exercises affected the heart rate the most, how much the heart rate increased at the different intervals and much more. Allow the students time to share their graphs with the class and state their conclusions based on the experiment and collected data.
For a grand finale, divide the class into two groups, and establish the average resting heart rate for each group. Have group one exercise steadily for 15 minutes while the second group sits quietly and reads. At the end of the 15 minutes, establish each group's average heart rate again and compare the two. The average for group one should have increased dramatically while group two's will have remained virtually the same.