Your skeleton is made up of over 200 bones that give your body its shape, protect your insides, and work with muscles to help you move. Bones are alive — they grow and repair themselves, and they need calcium and exercise to stay strong.
Feel bones through skin — knuckles, ribs, spine, kneecap. Look at a picture or model of a skeleton and name major bones. Discuss how a helmet protects the skull, and how the skull protects the brain. Compare a skeleton to a building frame.
Children often think bones are dry, dead sticks like the ones they see in Halloween decorations. In reality, bones are alive, filled with blood vessels, and constantly rebuilding themselves. Some children think bones cannot heal if they break, when bones are actually very good at repairing themselves.
If you press on your arm, you can feel something hard underneath the skin and muscle. That is a bone. Your whole body is supported by a framework of bones called your skeleton. You have over 200 bones (children actually start with about 270, and some fuse together as you grow). Together, they give your body its shape and hold you upright. Without your skeleton, you would be a floppy pile on the floor — like a puppet without strings.
Bones do more than just hold you up. They also protect the most important parts of your body. Your skull — the hard, round bone of your head — surrounds and protects your brain. Your rib cage — the curved bones in your chest — wraps around your heart and lungs like a cage, keeping them safe from bumps and hits. Your spine — the chain of small bones running down your back — protects the bundle of nerves that connects your brain to the rest of your body.
Here is something that might surprise you: bones are alive. They are not dry, dead sticks like the ones you see on Halloween. Real bones have blood flowing through them, living cells inside them, and the ability to grow and heal. If you break a bone, your body will grow new bone material to repair the break — usually in about six to eight weeks. To keep your bones strong and healthy, your body needs calcium (found in milk, cheese, yogurt, and leafy greens) and exercise (running, jumping, and playing put healthy stress on bones that makes them build up stronger). Your bones are taking care of you, so take care of them right back.