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Students should be able to describe the structure, function, and interactions of the organs of the human digestive, circulatory and respiratory systems.

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BW 6 and 9.
I think these two LOs link to BW4 as they both can incorporate the content that could be taught in the BW4 LO. For example in the BW6 LO, you could discuss how the health of the circulatory and respiratory systems are affected by different factors. I think this would contribute to student learning as they could learn about issues that could affect them or people they know and it would be interesting to learn about.
NoS 6 and 10.
I think thses two LOs link to BW4 as students could appreciate these LOs while learning about the BW4 LO. i think a lot of investigations could be carried out during the BW4 LO that would greatly contribute to student learning, especially as not all students like to learn by listening or writing they would prefer practical work.

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The key skills i think are most important and the ones i used in my planning were : 'Managing myself' and 'Working with others'.
i thought these were quiet important to incorporate in my planning. As this unit of learning was for a 1st year class, 'Managing myself' was an important concept to use in my planning as the students were new to the school and science.
In my planning i incorporated a lot of group and pair work. I think 'Working with others' is a vital skill for students and it is important to learn in 1st year. I wanted my students to get to know everyone in their class and be able to communicate and compromise while having fun and learning.

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I used this paper in my planning as i needed to understand scaffolding inquiry and how students will get better as the weeks go on and that all students won't be great at conducting inquiries at the start, they will develop these skills over time.

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I used this for my dissection class. It was a great resource to use to remind me of how to disect and what myself and the students were looking. A very good resource for a first time teacher.

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Introduction: Heart Dissection

Have a heart!

The original pump that is the drumbeat of our lives is an amazing structure. You've seen them on holiday cards, but now it's time for the real thing. A heart dissection is a fascinating experience that is at the core of our circulatory system, and our body as a whole. There our other dissection photos out there, but I wanted to make a clear walkthrough for teachers and students who are doing it.

What: Heart Dissection

Concepts: biology, anatomy, pumps

Time: ~45-60 minutes

Cost: ~$1.50 per heart

Materials:

One heart (pig, cow, or sheep from the butcher as in tact as possible)

4 x Dowels (or pencils)

Blade (X-acto or otherwise)

Tweezers

Tray

Pair of Gloves

Let's go!

A NOTE ON DISSECTIONS:

Dissecting animal organisms is a tricky subject which ultimately some will object to and that's okay. For us, we believe that with careful scientific exploration of animals who were treated in humane ways, we can learn and teach our students to be greater stewards of the environment, and especially toward the species they just learned about. There will always be some students who wish not to do a dissection, and we always allow whatever level of participation they choose in these experiences. Many prefer to just watch. Many of those eventually join in. But whatever it is, feel it out with your classroom or audience.

Step 1: Feel the Beat

Check to see if those tickers are ticking!

The first thing to do is get moving to put that heart into high gear. As your body needs more oxygen to its muscles, the heart beats faster to circulate it. After 30 seconds of hopping around, it's time to check those arteries for a pulse.

The circulatory system is one big loop with many branches. We describe the tracks as veins (blood going to heart) and arteries (blood going away). A way I help students remember is that the heart thinks it's the most important organ in the body, so everything going to it is a "vein" because it's "vain." To feel our pulse, check one of the easy arteries and hold for 30 seconds.

You can do the radial artery (inside the wrist), the carotid artery (on the neck), or simply feel your chest. What does your heart sound like? How fast is it beating? What's the pattern?

A few students may be able to detect the WUMP-wump, WUMP-wump part of the beat (which they've probably heard in movies, too). This has to do with the fact that our heart has four chambers, which we'll get too soon. This comes from the two pairs of valves in the chambers of the heart.

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Step 2: Check for Blood

Sure we've been told we're full of blood, but how do we know?

Maybe you've got a cut before, but you can see evidence even without an injury. Just look around.

Starting with looking at an eye, you can see both arteries and veins. The retinal arteries are thinner and brighter red than the veins. If you have a flashlight, you can also see blood in any narrow part of our skin like in our fingers and in our ears. For simple viewing, what do you think gives our tongues and gums that color?

Step 3: Have a Heart

Starting with a pig heart, there is a lot to notice before we start cutting. What do you see?

To start, let's orient our heart so that we're looking at the front. This is how it would sit inside the animal with them facing on us. We're going to refer to "left" as the animal's left, and right as the animal's "right," which is how things are described medically. That will be opposite the way we view them.

Looking at the front, you might notice a groove down the middle of the heart. This is the interventricular sulcus. This divides the ventricles, which we'll get into in a bit. If you flip it around, you might find a little bit of tissue, hanging like an ear flap. Those are the auricles, which help protect the atria inside.

Often hearts from the butcher will have a cut along one of the sides, which they do so the blood can drain out. You may see some coagulated blood (dark dark brown). What else can you find?

Step 4: Veins and Arteries

How many tubes go into and out of the heart? Try to find all four.

With a heart from the butcher, the first two you'll probably notice are the superior vena cava and the aorta. The superior vena cava is a vein that brings all of the blood from your upper body to your heart. There is also an inferior vena cava (which is often chopped off) that brings blood from the lower half of your body. The aorta is an artery that takes blood from your heart and pumps it through back toward your body. You can see these are thick as they are dealing with a lot of force. See where they lead.

Often in the front, you'll simply find two tubes without flaps which are the pulmonary veins and arteries. First, blood comes in from the vena cava on the right ventricle, then gets pumped out the pulmonary artery. After getting oxygen, it returns through the pulmonary vein, and then back out to the body.

These can be tricky, so use dowels or pencils to mark the four ins and outs.

Step 5: Making the Cut

There are many ways you can cut your heart, but the most informative will perhaps be directly down the interventricular sulcus. Find the line in the front of the heart, and make an incision that isn't too deep, only going through the top wall.

Lightly pull the two parts so it opens like a book, and take a look inside.

Step 6: A Four Bedroom House

The first thing to look for are the four rooms of the heart.

They match up with the two main arteries and veins we looked at, and are called atriums (top ones) and ventricles. Try putting your fingers through the arteries and veins to see if you can trace the path blood takes from the body, to the lungs, back from the lungs, and to the body.

We have four chambers, but if you want to do some investigating, you can learn about fish hearts, which only have two.

Step 7: The Pieces of the Heart

There are many things to look and learn about inside the heart. Some of the things you might try to find include:

Valves -- the tricuspid and bicuspid valve are easily visible and divide the atriums from the ventricles.

Chordae Tendinae -- the "heartstrings," which pull on valves to open or close them. Try it out with a pair of tweezers.

Papillary Muscle -- just like in our limbs, tendons need muscles to pull them, and those are the densely packed papillary muscles. These are fascinating, as unlike our other muscles, they are not attached to the skeletal structure.

Compare Ventricle Walls -- if you look at the right and left ventricles, one is much thicker than the other. Can you see which one? In the left ventricle, the heart has to contract to move blood throughout the whole body, so it has to have more muscle than the right, which brings blood a short distance to the lungs.

Keep going! See what else you can find!

Step 8: Keep Exploring

There's more inside the heart alone, and more to see when you compare them. When you look between hearts, you can start to notice differences between animals, individuals, the health of an animal by fat deposits and tissue, and much more.

Have fun, be respectful in dissection, and keep exploring and learning.

Teacher Notes

Teachers! Did you use this instructable in your classroom?
Add a Teacher Note to share how you incorporated it into your lesson.

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Heart Dissection: Have a heart! The original pump that is the drumbeat of our lives is an amazing structure. You've seen them on holiday cards, but now it's time for the real thing. A heart dissection is a fascinating experience that is at the core of our circulato...

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A fun resource for 1st year students learning about the heart for the first time.

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The heart is about the size of your fist, and you won't believe the things that this very important organ can do. Prepare to be amazed by these cool heart facts.

So, first let's take a look at how this little bit of dynamite that comes in a small package works.

The heart is like a big pump made of muscles, and it constantly pumps blood throughout our bodies every minute of every day. These movements are called 'involuntary' which means you don't actually have to think about making your heart beat; your brain does the work for you and passes on the message.

So everyone thinks that the heart is on the left side of your chest, well it's not. Whoever made that up has fooled people for years, maybe it was a trickster trying to trick us. It's actually right in the middle of your chest between your two lungs. It is protected by your ribs. At least we know it's in a safe spot!

The heart has four chambers, the left and right atrium and the left and right ventricles. Interestingly 'atrium' is the Latin word for entrance hall and 'ventricle' is the Latin word for little belly. So, there's a little belly inside our hearts...interesting.

There are also four valves in the heart, and these are there to make sure that the blood only goes one way, in or out. Imagine the chaos it would cause if the blood was going in and out all at the same time.

So how does the blood get around our bodies? Well when it leaves the heart it gets taken on a journey through arteries. Have you heard of the aorta and the pulmonary artery? Well these are super important for making sure our blood gets to the right place at the right time. It's like a well-timed train.

But what about when the blood needs to go back to the heart. Well here it is carried through veins. If you look at your wrists, you'll probably be able to see veins which look blue from the outside.

Then there's blood that comes from the lungs into the left atrium; this is transported along nicely through the pulmonary veins, while blood that comes from the body goes flowing in through the superior vena cava (this carries blood from your upper body) and inferior vena cava (this carries blood from your lower body).

You must have felt your own heart beating, well this actually works from electricity, yes really, electricity! Your heart contracts, or tightens up and this makes all the chambers smaller and pushes blood back into the blood vessels. So that's how it's done...interesting! When your heart relaxes again, the chambers get bigger and the blood comes back into your heart. Wow, sounds pretty complex.

Interesting and unusual facts about the heart

The heart weighs between 7 and 15 ounces (about 200 to 425 grams) which is about the same as a bottle of Heinz Ketchup! Pick up a bottle of ketchup and you'll be able to feel how much your heart actually weighs.

Now this is quite unbelievable. The average adult heart beats about 72 times a minute, 100,000 times a day and 3,600 times a year. During a person's life their heart could beat more than 3.5 billion, yes 3.5 billion, times.

This amazing bit of body machinery pumps about 100 gallons (380 liters) of blood through your body, every single hour, which is about 2,400 gallons (9000 liters) per day. Man it works hard. That's about the same as 1,600 glasses of water, per hour and 38,400 glasses of water per day. Wow. We certainly wouldn't be able to drink that much water. Now let's work that out over a lifetime...it pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime which would fill three super tankers. Getting the idea of how hard this little fellow works?

Let's look at it in another way. Turn on your kitchen faucet all the way for 45 years and that is the same amount of blood that is pumped through your heart in a lifetime. Okay, don't turn on the faucet; your parents won't be too pleased at all! What a waste of water too.

Want to know how fast the blood pumps through your aorta? It pumps at 1 mile (1.6km's) per hour. That is pretty fast.

You know when you hear the sound of your heartbeat; it's got a kind of 'lub dub' sound. Well that's from your four heart valves closing. What a cool thing to know.

Your heart does the most physical work out of any other muscle in the body. Hardly surprising when you see all the work it's got to do.

All of your blood vessels, which include arteries, veins and capillaries, are over 60,000 miles long (about 97,000km's). If we had to stretch them all out it would go round the world twice. No way. How they all fit in our body who knows.

This is interesting. During a heartbeat the heart creates pressure, okay cool. Now the amount of pressure it creates would be able to make your blood squirt a distance of about 30 feet (9 meters).

In 1967 Dr Christopher Barnard did the first ever successful heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. It was a wonder of medicine.

Can you believe there is actually a time and a day when most heart attacks occur? Well it's between 8 and 9am in the morning and Monday is the most popular day. Perhaps we aren't all that keen on Monday.

To keep your heart healthy you really need to get out there and get some exercise in...at least 30 minutes on most days of the week.

Why is the heart always associated with love? Well there are different theories, the Greeks believed the heart was the seat of the spirit, the Chinese associated it with the center for happiness and the Egyptians thought the emotions and intellect arose from the heart. Then Plato came along and believed that we reason through our brains but love came from our heart.

Early Egyptians believed that the heart, and other organs, moved around inside our bodies. Imagine that, we'd never be able to sit still.

Did you know that the heart can continue to beat outside of the body as long as it has got enough oxygen? Well this is because it has its very own electrical impulse. Freaky.

The heart pumps blood to almost all of the 75 trillion cells in our body. The only part of our body that doesn't get blood is the corneas in our eyes. 75 trillion cells, no way.

This is very interesting and very fast too. When your body is at rest it takes 6 seconds for the blood to go from your heart to your lungs and back again, 8 seconds for it to go to your brain and back and 16 seconds for it to go all the way down to your toes and back.

Imagine this. Your heart creates enough energy every single day to drive a truck for 20 miles (32km's). So if you're 10 you would have been able to drive a truck for 73,000 miles (about 118,000km's). Who knows where you'd be now, but you'd have been able to go to the moon and back.

If you own a cat, you're in luck. It can reduce your risk of having a heart attack by more than a third. Think you should ask your parents for a cat if you don't have one, you'll be super healthy.

Did you know that when you listen to music your heartbeat changes and it takes on the same beat as what you're listening to? So when you're listening to super-fast music your heart beats faster and slower when you're listening to calming music. Amazing huh.

This is grim! In 1929, German surgeon Werner Forssmann examined the inside of his own heart. He threaded a catheter into his arm vein and pushed it 20 inches (50cm's) into his heart. But some good did come out of this as he actually invented something called 'cardiac catheterization' - which doctors now use all the time.

Men and women's hearts beat differently. A women's heartbeat is faster than a man's at 78 beats per minute and a man's at 70 beats per minute.

Do you know what an electrocardiograph is? Well it measures the electric current in the heart and helps doctors to know what's happening in this amazing organ. It was invented in 1903.

If you want to feel how fast your heart is beating put your finger on the side of your wrist or throat. This is your pulse. Get the stopwatch out and see how many times it beats in a minute. As a kid it should beat about 75 to 100 times per minute. Go on, check it out now.

When you're running around, or if you're excited, have you noticed that your heart beats faster? Well that's because your heart needs to work even harder than normal to get more blood to your muscles so they're in tip-top shape. Gosh as if it doesn't work hard enough already.

Now we know the heart works hard, but this might shock you. Even when you're resting your heart is still working at an unbelievable pace...twice as hard as the leg muscles of someone that is sprinting. Amazing.

The aorta is almost as thick as a garden hose. On the flip side, your capillaries are so small that it would take ten of them to be as thick as a piece of hair.

This fist-sized piece of our body is a truly amazing little bit of machinery. Oh the places we can go with it...even to the moon and back!

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The heart is about the size of your fist, and you won't believe the things that this very important organ can do. Prepare to be amazed by these cool heart facts. So, first let's take a look at how this little bit of dynamite that comes in a small package works.

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A good resource to discuss effects of one factor on your heart.

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7 Reasons to Be Smoke-Free

Most people don't smoke. From yellow teeth to coughing, here are seven reasons why that's a good thing.

Thirdhand Smoke

When people smoke, it creates smoke that you can see (secondhand smoke) and a kind of air pollution that you can't see that's called thirdhand smoke.

Most middle school students don't smoke - only about 1 in 50 does. And most high school students don't smoke either - about 9 in 100 do.

But why do those who smoke ever begin?

There's more than just one answer. Some kids may start smoking just because they're curious. Others may like the idea of doing something dangerous - something grownups don't want them to do. Still others might know lots of people who smoke and they might think it's a way to act or look like an adult.

Fortunately, fewer people are starting smoking than a few years ago. Maybe that's because more and more people have learned that smoking and tobacco use can cause cancer and heart disease.

But sometimes kids can't really think that far into the future to worry about an illness they might not get for many years.

So let's talk about the problems that might affect kids more quickly:

yellow teeth

smelly clothes

more colds and coughs

difficulty keeping up with friends when playing sports

empty wallet - cigarettes and tobacco products are very expensive!

Let's find out more about cigarettes and tobacco.

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What Are Smoking and Smokeless Tobacco?

Tobacco (say: tuh-BA-ko) is a plant that can be smoked in cigarettes, pipes, or cigars. It's the same plant that's in smokeless tobacco, known as dip, chew, snuff, spit, or chewing tobacco. Smokeless tobacco is not lit or inhaled like tobacco in cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. Instead, smokeless tobacco is put between the lip and gum and sucked on inside the mouth.

Tobacco contains nicotine (say: NIH-kuh-teen), a chemical that causes a tingly or pleasant feeling - but that feeling only lasts for a little while. Nicotine is also addictive (say: uh-DIK-tiv). That means that if you start to use nicotine, your body and mind will become so used to it that you'll need to have it just to feel OK.

Anyone who starts smoking could become addicted to it. If you're addicted to something, it's very hard to stop doing it, even if you want to. Some kids get addicted right away. And adults are often addicted, which is why so many of them have a hard time quitting smoking.

Why Is It So Bad for You?

Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. In fact, each day 1300 people die from smoking alone.

The nicotine and other poisonous chemicals in tobacco cause lots of diseases, like heart problems and some kinds of cancer. If you smoke, you hurt your lungs and heart each time you light up. It also can make it more difficult for blood to move around in the body, so smokers may feel tired and cranky. The longer you smoke, the worse the damage becomes.

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The Other Cost of Smoking

Using tobacco eats up a lot of money, too. A pack of cigarettes costs about $6, on average. That means, even if you buy just one pack a week, you'll spend $312 in a year. Some people smoke a pack a day, which adds up to $2,190! That's a lot of computer games and clothes you could buy instead.

What's It Like?

Usually, people don't like smoking or chewing tobacco at first. Your body is smart, and it knows when it's being poisoned. When people try smoking for the first time, they often cough a lot and feel pain or burning in their throat and lungs. This is your lungs' way of trying to protect you and tell you to keep them smoke free.

Also, many people say that they feel sick to their stomachs or even throw up. If someone accidentally swallows chewing tobacco, they may be sick for hours. Yuck.

What if My Friend Smokes?

If you have friends who smoke or use tobacco, you can help them by encouraging them to quit. Here are some reasons you can mention:

It will hurt their health.

It will make their breath stinky.

It will turn their teeth yellow.

It will give them less endurance when running or playing sports.

It's expensive.

It's illegal to buy cigarettes when you're underage.

If you think it will help, you could print out articles like this one to give to a friend who smokes. He or she may be interested in learning more about the dangers of smoking.

But people don't like to hear that they're doing something wrong, so your pal also could be a little angry. If that happens, don't push it too much. In time, your friend may realize you are right.

In the meantime, it could help to talk with a parent or a school counselor if you're worried about your friend. When your friend is ready, a grownup can help him or her quit for good. If your friend decides to quit, lend your support. You might say it's time to kick some butts!

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Everyone says smoking is bad for you. Why? Find out in this article for kids.

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Resources to lots of topics in the junior cycle

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Tes provides a range of primary and secondary school teaching resources including lesson plans, worksheets and student activities for all curriculum subjects.

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A resource i used at the beginning of the second part of this UOL

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Lungs - your lungs

Contents

Why do we need air? Because we could not survive without the oxygen in the air that we breathe. We could not take in the oxygen if we didn't have lungs. We also need to breathe out carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is made when our bodies use oxygen and other nutrients in our food to give us energy.

You have two lungs, which together form one of the largest organs in your body.

The lung on your left is a bit smaller than the lung on the right because it has to make room for your heart to fit in your chest too. The lungs and the heart need to be close together because they work together.

Your rib cage goes around your lungs and heart to protect them from damage. Your ribs also move when you breathe in and out.

Below your lungs is the diaphragm (say dye-a-fram). This is a big muscle that works with your lungs to get air in (inhale) and out (exhale).

You can feel how they work together.

1. Put one hand on your chest and the other on the upper part of your tummy.

2. Now breathe in deeply. You will feel your chest and your tummy get bigger as the air goes into your lungs.

3. When the diaphragm contracts (gets tighter) it pushes some of the organs in your tummy down so that there is more space in your chest.

What lungs look like

Here is a diagram of the lungs.

If you could see them, they would look pink and rubbery on the outside. Inside they look a lot like sponges. Air comes down from your nose or mouth through the trachea (say trak-ee-a), or windpipe, into two large tubes called the bronchi (say bron-key). One bronchus (say bron-kuss) goes into the left lung and the other into the right.

Each bronchus is rather like the trunk of a tree because it has what look like branches and twigs growing from it. The smallest 'twigs' are called bronchioles (say bron-key-oles). They are so tiny that they are like hairs.

At the end of these bronchioles there are little bunches of alveoli (say al-vee-o-lie). These are sacs, or little bags, full of air. There are about 600 million of them in your lungs, so you can imagine how very tiny they must be and what a powerful microscope you would need to look at them!

Each tiny alveolus (that's the name for one of them) is covered in even tinier blood vessels called capillaries (say ca-pill-a-riz).

Each part of your lungs has an important role to play.

Breathing in

When you inhale, or breathe in, the air goes in through your nose or mouth. Little hairs called cilia (say silly-a) inside your nostrils catch tiny particles of dust. If they don't catch all of them, there are more cilia and mucus inside your trachea, which trap the dust and stop it from getting into your lungs.

Your diaphragm flattens out (contracts), your ribcage lifts and the air goes through all the little branches in your lungs to fill up the air sacs, or alveoli.

Oxygen goes through the walls of the alveoli and into the capillaries where the oxygen enters the red blood cells in each tiny blood vessel. The blood carries the oxygen to the heart. The heart pumps all the oxygen-carrying blood to every cell in the body.

Breathing out

As each red blood cell empties its load of oxygen, it picks up carbon dioxide (say car-bon dye-ox-eyed) from the cells and heads back to the lungs.

The carbon dioxide is carried by the red blood cells in the lungs' capillaries to the alveoli, where it is emptied into the air that leaves the body when you breathe out.

For you to exhale, or breathe out, the diaphragm relaxes, muscles between the ribs relax and air is pushed out of the lungs.

This air then goes up through all the bronchioles, up the bronchi, up the trachea and out through the nose or mouth.

Look after your lungs

1
Don't smoke and keep away from others who smoke. Lungs do not like cigarette smoke - it can damage them, and cause disease and even death.

2
Stay out of the workshop if someone is using chemicals, as some can damage your lungs. Remind mum she should wear a mask and have windows open if she is using some chemicals, like when she is cleaning the oven or using drain cleaner.

3
Get plenty of exercise. It makes the muscles around your lungs work harder and makes them stronger.

4
If there is a fire in your home or school, stand well back from the fire as breathing smoke can be bad for your lungs. Have you noticed how firemen wear special masks when they are fighting fires? The heat from smoke can burn the tiny bronchioles in your lungs and some chemicals that are made when plastics and other materials burn in a house fire can be poisonous.

When lungs don't work well

Some people have . Sometimes when they get a cold, are in contact with something they are allergic to, or exercise hard, the muscles in tiny tubes in their lungs get tighter making the tubes narrower and there is a lot more mucus. This makes it hard to get air into the alveoli. They can become very short of breath and often they need medicines to help their lungs work well. Our topics on can tell you more about it.

Illnesses like bronchitis (say bron-kite-us) and pneumonia (say new-mow-nee-a) also make it hard for air to get into the alveoli.

When lungs don't work well, that means there is not enough oxygen getting round to all the cells of the body, and the body systems don't work as well as usual.

- You feel short of breath.

It feels like you don't have any energy and
can't do things.

It feels like you just want to lie down
and rest or sleep.

Kids say

"When I was four I went to hospital. I had asthma and I had a special thing on my finger. I had to breathe in a mask. My dad was reading to me."

"I've had pneumonia before. I was in hospital for 5 days. I had to have an oxygen mask because my lungs would not work properly. They were all blocked up."

"I had food poisoning. I couldn't breathe and I had a mask and I couldn't eat. I was in hospital for four weeks. It was really boring." Lizzie

"My house was on fire. My brother got me out but I was really coughing and I couldn't breathe. I had to have a mask with oxygen and my chest hurt for a few days but I'm alright now."

"My grandpop had cancer in his lungs and he died. He used to smoke a lot. I miss him." Carly

I get asthma and have a puffer to help me to breathe. I have another special medicine which I have to take every morning when there is a lot of pollen in the air. It stops the pollen making me wheezy when it gets into my lungs.

You breathe in about 11,000 litres of air every day.

When you are exercising you breathe in more air to send oxygen around to the muscles that you are moving.

On average, adults breathe between 12 and 20 times a minute when resting. Use a timer for check how many times you breathe when you are resting, and then when you have just been exercising.

Every person breathes all the time. Breathing is so important that you don't have to spend all your time thinking "breathe in, now breathe out" - your body does that automatically. Take care to exercise your lungs and keep them away from harmful things, especially cigarette smoke.

We've provided this information to help you to understand important things about staying healthy and happy. However, if you feel sick or unhappy, it is important to tell your mum or dad, a teacher or another grown-up.

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lungs; breathe; breath; breathing; oxygen; air; inhale; exhale;

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Kids' Health - Topics - Lungs - your lungs

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Contents Why do we need air? Because we could not survive without the oxygen in the air that we breathe. We could not take in the oxygen if we didn't have lungs. We also need to breathe out carbon dioxide into the air.