🚛 Department of Transportation – Journey Through the Great River 🛤️🩸

The other day, we explored how the Department of Defense 🛡️ protects Body Nation from invaders and how the Department of Nutrition 🍎 delivers essential fuel to every cell, and how the Department of Respiration helps the nation by delivering essential oxygen.🩸🌊My story today is about the Great River itself, or also named the Department of Transportation! 🚛

Do you remember when we investigated from where do we get our bread? And how many "transporter's" we added on the way? There are buses, trains, planes , cargo ships and trucks, all delivering important things like food, water, and supplies for our homes. In our bodies, the Department of Transportation does the same! It’s responsible for moving everything the cells need from your head to your toes.

The Great River is powered by a strong, tireless pump: your heart ❤️! Place your hand on your chest and feel it. Your heart is the size of your fist, and it never stops working, even when youre asleep. With each beat, the heart sends blood on a journey through the arteries, veins, and capillaries, like highways, roads, and tiny side streets. And there's special "delivery cells" called red blood cells which carry oxygen from the Department of Respiration 🫁, while the white blood cells which we have discovered as guards from the Department of Defence, are always on standby , ready to protect your body. Nutrients from the Department of Nutrition 🥦 hitch a ride on this web of highways too.

Imagine the heart as a big, busy house with four rooms 🏠💖 Blood enters one room on the right side of the heart 🏠➡️, this blood is a bit low on energy, and then moves to another room where it’s pumped over to the lungs ( The Department of Respiration) 🫁 for a fresh supply of oxygen. Once full of oxygen 🌬️✨, it travels back to the left side of the heart, and gets ready to head out. Finally, with a strong push from the last room 💪🚀, the blood flows out into the Great River 🩸🌊, delivering oxygen to every corner of your Body, on the way it will pick up some nutrients and minerals too.

But the Department of Transportation isn’t just about delivering oxygen and nutrients—it's also a top-notch clean-up crew! 🚛🧹 Besides bringing fresh supplies, it also carries away waste products that cells no longer need. And guess what? Your heart has a special connection with the Department of Purification ♻️, which handles all those waste products! But that’s anothe story for another day…✨

Now think about what happens when you start running, jumping, or dancing 🎶🏃. Your muscles shout out, "More oxygen, please!" 🗣️💨, and the heart and lungs jump into action, pumping and delivering faster to keep up. 🌬️💖 Now we will make a little test. Set a timer 1 minute and count how many beats your heart does for this minute. Then set another one minute timer and hop on one leg (or switch ) for a minute and count again for a minute. Is there any difference?

Questions to Wonder Aloud 🧐

• Why do you think your pulse changes during activities like hoping 🏃 or resting? 💓

• If every red blood cell carries oxygen, what do you think happens to cells that don’t get enough oxygen?

• I wonder, which is the animal with fastest heartbeat? And which one has the slowest heartbeat?

Possible Follow-up Projects:

1. Animal Hearts Comparison Across Species 🐟🦎🐦👤Linking to: Body Systems material - Zoology

How: Using Body Systems material, children can explore and compare the hearts of various animals, creating a layout with the illustrated material and discuss the differences and their functions: Fish: Simple two-chambered heart, adapted for aquatic environments. Frogs: Three-chambered heart, transitioning from water to land.Birds: Four-chambered heart with specialized air sacs to sustain flight.Mammals: Four-chambered heart supporting a complex, high-energy lifestyle.

Why: Helps children see how each circulatory system adapts to the animal’s lifestyle, illustrating diversity and survival adaptations in various habitats.

2. Rivers and Blood Vessels Mapping 🏞️🩸Linking to: Geography - River Systems
How: Children compare river systems to the human circulatory system, identifying “tributaries” (small capillaries) and “main rivers” (arteries and veins). Using real maps, they can create a visual map linking river structures to the flow of blood in the body.
Why: Integrates geography and biology, helping children understand the natural flow systems and appreciate how patterns repeat in both living and non-living systems.

3. Creating the Circulatory System Through Art 🎨Linking to: Art - Line and Shape
How: Using colored lines and shapes, children can represent arteries, veins, and capillaries. Thick, red lines can represent arteries, thin blue lines for veins, and small red dots for capillaries. The final piece can be a mural showing the interconnected paths of the circulatory system.
Why: Visualizing biological systems through art allowing creative expression through the representation of patterns and networks.

4. Heartbeat Rhythm and Pulse Investigation 💓🎶Linking to: Music and Physical Activity
How: Children can experiment with creating rhythms that imitate the heart’s sounds and patterns using drums or hand claps. They can explore faster and slower rhythms to mimic resting and active heart rates, and even try pulse-checking activities after exercise to see real changes.
Why: Linking physical body rhythms with musical rhythm, emphasizing the connection between physical states and auditory perception, making biological functions feel relatable.

With Montessori joy,

Vanina 😊