Hear Your Heart

Hear Your Heart

When I visit the doctor, he listens to my heart with a stethoscope. The stethoscope is cold. It makes me shiver. I like my stethoscope much better. It isn't cold. My stethoscope is a cardboard tube. My sister, Lisa, has one, too.

We save tubes and turn them into stethoscopes. Sometimes they are tubes from old rolls of paper towels. Sometimes they are tubes from old toilet-paper rolls. Any kind of cardboard tube will do. This is how you listen to someone's heart: Ask a friend to find the heartbeat on the left side of her chest. Put one end of your tube on this spot. Now put your ear at the other end. We listen to our friends’ hearts, and they listen to ours. Phil's heart beats like this: pum-PUM pum-PUMpum-PUM pum-PUM. Molly's heart beats the same way. So does mine. So does Lisa's.

Dad's heart is a little slower. It beats like this: ka-DUM ka-DUM ka-DUM ka-DUM. Andrew is only eleven months old. Mom holds him so we can listen to his heart. Andrew's heart has a very quick beat. It goes: tup-pa tup-pa tup-pa tup-pa tup-pa.

Put your hand on your chest. Can you feel your heart? Your heart is about as big as your fist. It doesn't look like a heart on a valentine. It is shaped more like a pear. Your heart has tubes attached to it. When your heart beats, it moves blood through your body.

Your heart is full of blood. When it beats, it squeezes itself together. That's when the heart contracts. Blood squirts out into some of the tubes. Then your heart stops squeezing and opens up again. That's when the heart expands. Blood flows into it through the other tubes. Blood flows away from your heart in tubes called arteries. Blood flows into your heart in tubes called veins. In this picture the arteries are colored red. The veins are black.