Heartbeat Detectives — Thump Before and After

A two-minute “science experiment” in which the child feels their own heartbeat while resting, makes it race with a burst of movement, then notices it slow down again — the simplest way to show a 5-year-old that their insides send messages they can feel.

  1. Sit or lie down together somewhere quiet. Say: “Your heart is a muscle that goes thump-thump all day. Let’s be detectives and find it.”
  2. Show the child how to press a flat hand firmly on the middle-left of their chest. Stay still and silent for about 20 seconds. Ask: “Can you feel anything? Is it fast or slow? Big or tiny?” Not feeling anything at rest is completely normal — say so.
  3. Now make the heart “wake up”: 20–30 seconds of jumping jacks, running on the spot, or fast stair-stepping.
  4. Freeze, hand back on the chest. Ask the same questions again: “What changed? Where else can you feel it — your neck, your ears, your tummy? What is your breathing doing?”
  5. Lie down for one minute and keep checking. Let the child tell you when the thumping has “gone back to sleepy.”
  6. Finish by naming the pattern: “Moving fast makes your heart go fast. Resting makes it slow. Your heart also goes fast when you’re excited or scared — that’s the same thump.”

Variation: listen instead of feel — the child puts an ear on your chest (or uses a cardboard tube as a “stethoscope”) before and after you do the jumping. Or tap the rhythm out on a drum or the floor: slow taps for the resting heart, fast taps for the busy heart.

Requirements

  • Space: About 2 × 2 meters of clear floor for jumping, plus a spot to lie down
  • Surface: Non-slippery floor; a rug, mat, or grass for lying down
  • Materials: None; optional cardboard tube "stethoscope" or a toy drum
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; siblings can join and compare
  • Supervision: Light — adult leads the questions and does the activity alongside

Rationale & Objective

Heartbeat is the body signal researchers use most often to study interoception, and it is one of the few a young child can deliberately turn up and down. At rest most preschoolers cannot feel their heart at all; after brief exercise the signal becomes strong enough to notice. Schaan et al. (2019) used exactly this idea — a short bout of jumping jacks followed by heartbeat reporting — to measure interoceptive accuracy in 4–6-year-olds; accuracy rose with age, although it was not clearly related to the children’s emotion recognition or regulation. The South Australian Department for Education’s Ready to Learn interoception materials use the same contrast principle (create a change in body state, then pause and notice where you feel it), with pulse as one of the core focus areas alongside muscles, breathing, and temperature. Linking a pounding heart to “excited” or “scared” lays groundwork for the later skill of reading emotions from body cues (Craig, 2002; Mahler’s Interoception Curriculum). The research on teaching interoception to children is still early and mostly small studies, so treat this as low-risk, sensible practice rather than a proven training.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: cannot find the heartbeat at rest or after exercise without an adult placing their hand; says “nothing” or guesses; notices breathing or sweaty skin before the heart
  • Developing: clearly feels the thump after exercise and says “fast” or “big”; still feels nothing at rest; needs prompts to notice other changes such as breathing
  • Proficient: describes the difference between resting and after-exercise heartbeat in their own words; reports when it has slowed down again; spots a second signal unprompted (puffing, hot face, wobbly legs)
  • Advanced: spontaneously mentions their heartbeat in daily life (“my heart is going fast, I ran a lot” or “my heart is thumpy, I’m nervous”); predicts what will happen to it before an activity

Safety Notes

  • Keep the exercise burst short (under a minute) and stop if the child is dizzy, in pain, or unusually breathless
  • Children with a known heart condition, uncontrolled asthma, or exercise restrictions should follow their doctor’s guidance on exertion — the listening variation needs no exercise
  • Teach a flat hand on the chest rather than pressing fingers into the neck; pressing on the neck is uncomfortable and unnecessary
  • Some anxious children find noticing a racing heart alarming — keep the tone curious and matter-of-fact (“that’s your heart doing its job”) and stop if the child becomes worried
  • Chest pain, fainting, or blue lips with exercise are never part of normal play — seek medical advice promptly

Hints

  • Playfulness: give the heart a voice — whisper “thump… thump…” for the sleepy heart and “thumpa-thumpa-thumpa!” for the busy one. Let the child be the scientist who announces the results to the family
  • Sustain interest: test different “heart wakers” on different days — dancing, stairs, a scooter ride, a tickle fight — and vote on which made the biggest thump
  • Common mistake: insisting the child should feel something at rest. Most 5-year-olds cannot, and pushing leads to guessing. “Nothing yet” is a correct detective report
  • Limited space: march or run on the spot, or do fast sit-to-stands from a chair — no travelling needed
  • Cross-domain: count thumps together for 10 seconds before and after and compare which number is bigger (numeracy); draw a slow heart and a fast heart (art); talk about what the heart does (early science)
  • Progression: feel the heart after exercise → notice it slowing down → find a second signal (breath, warm face) → guess beforehand what will change → notice a fast heart during real feelings and name it

Sources

  • Schaan, L., Schulz, A., Nuraydin, S., Bergert, C., Hilger, A., Rach, H. & Hechler, T. (2019), “Interoceptive accuracy, emotion recognition, and emotion regulation in preschool children,” International Journal of Psychophysiology, 138, 47–56 — jumping-jack heartbeat task with 4–6-year-olds
  • Department for Education South Australia — Ready to Learn Interoception Kit (pulse, breathing, muscle, and temperature activities)
  • Craig, A.D. (2002), “How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience
  • Mahler, K. (2019), The Interoception Curriculum: A Step-by-Step Guide to Developing Mindful Self-Regulation
  • AOTA (2020), Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process, 4th ed. (OTPF-4) — interoception listed among sensory functions