How big are your lungs

A measuring lung capacity activity, staff lead.
You will need a large plastic bottle, I used a 5litre (windsreen wash topup bottle-empty and washed, and for smaller children a 2 litre coke bottle), mark the volumes with permanent pen on the outside of the bottle (add 100ml of water at a time to see where the marks should go. Have a steriliser solution in a beaker(baby bottle tablet types are great, as well as a rinse beaker to clean the mouth part of the pipe each time.
In one big breath students blow into the upturned bottle and their lung volume is recorded.
For younger students you can give each student an identical balloon (care with latex allergies) and get them to blow in one breath, tie up and stick "same size" balloons on board like a bar graph but made from balloons. Different colours look great. Visualy you see a bar graph on the wall made from balloons with the most common lung capacity having the tallest column of balloons.....then you can work on "real" bar charts