Blood

How Blood Works provides an essential overview of blood composition, blood functions, and blood types.

SciShow is a video series that delivers a lot of information in a concise format. Take a look at What Color is Your Blood?, Why Do Our Bones Make Our Blood?, and Blood Transfusions.

Visit the American Society of Hematology for facts and informational videos on blood basics and blood disorders.

Overview of Blood from the University of Rochester Medical Center includes a discussion of blood tests and how they help to diagnose illness.

The Red Cross has an engaging interactive site showing which blood types can donate to which other types and explaining how blood type is inherited. You may wish to use a simplified explanation with your students. The site also discusses the importance of the blood supply and current blood needs.

Do the benefits of blood transfusions outweigh the risks? Watch this PBS “Need to Know” video that addresses current scientific thought on this topic.

Blood Cell Basics is a complete STEM lesson plan for grades 3-5. The lesson includes connections to engineering, hands-on activities, and worksheets.

Blood Does A Body Good, from Science News for Kids, includes a student article, teacher’s guide and vocabulary list.

Components of the Blood includes presentation slides and interactive worksheets for use with your classroom whiteboard.

Flowing Smoothly is a worksheet to help students understand the circulation of blood throughout the body.

What Is Blood? offers a PowerPoint lesson, coloring sheets, and a teacher-made game.

Four Parts of Blood introduces students to problems that can arise when certain blood cells do not function properly.

How The Body Makes Blood has an optional voice-over that reads the text aloud to your students.

In Blood Types and Heredity, designed for middle-school grades, students are challenged to discover the pattern of genetic transfer for blood type.

Although designed for secondary students, Explore the Mystery of Blood lesson plan can be adapted for younger grades. Resources include images of normal and abnormal blood cell slides.

Check out these educational resources for teaching about white blood cells’ role in the immune system for elementary and middle school classrooms.

Science Kids has a fascinating video of the immune system in action that shows pathogens trying to attach to healthy cells, before being attacked by antibodies and engulfed by white blood cells. Another depiction of the work of white blood cells can be found at Arizona State University’s Viral Attack, available in both comic book and video form, with accompanying teacher’s guide.

Open Up Science: Blood, from the Cambridge Science Center, offers activities such as Blood Cell Sudoku, Blood Type Matching, and Blood Model in a Bottle.

Blood Chemistry, designed for grades 4-6, is a complete lesson and simulation of different blood types and the ways they interact. You may wish to combine this activity with The Blood Typing Game.

Making a blood model that shows the components of whole blood is a great hands-on classroom project that younger students will love. In the following activities, everyday materials represent red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma:

• Blood For Kids utilizes red candies, lima beans, rice, and corn syrup to concoct a blood model.
• Science4Us: Blood Cells demonstrates a simple model for grades K-2.
• Epic Science for grades 4-6 shows how to make a blood model using polymer spheres, ping-pong balls, and straws.
• Blood Cell Model suggests using materials to help the mixture clump into white blood cells.
• Learning About Blood includes additional links to helpful teaching resources, as well as a blood model activity where students add ingredients to adjust the color of oxygenated and non-oxygenated blood.

Science Sparks: Blood includes directions for making blood models, a pumping heart model, and a model scab that shows how platelets form a clot over damaged skin.

In Design a Circulatory System from the Exploratorium, students build and test their own models of blood flow through the human body.

You may wish to use one or more of these kid-friendly videos in the classroom.

• SciShow Kids: How Do Cuts Heal?
• SciShow Kids: How Your Heart Pumps Blood 
• The Circulatory System Journey
• Operation Ouch: Bright Red Blood Cells
• PBS-WTIU: All About Blood! and How Scabs Work

Wonderopolis answers questions from kids about blood.

• How Does Blood Travel Through Your Body?
• If Blood Is Red, Why Are Veins Blue?
• How Much Blood Is In Your Body?
• What Type of Blood Do You Have?
• Why Is Blood Pressure Important?

KidsHealth is a useful site for introducing students to information about blood and to direct them for beginning research. Take a look at What’s Blood?, Blood Types, Blood Transfusions, What’s Anemia?, Blood Testing, and The Circulatory System.

Kiddle Encyclopedia and Brittanica Kids have blood facts, images, and graphics tailored to elementary students.

Scholastic’s Study Jam: The Circulatory System includes a video and a quiz.

You may want to introduce students to jobs in the field of blood, including phlebotomists, hematologists, and researchers.