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Your skeleton is like the poles of a tent. Without the poles, the tent would fall down into a heap. Without bones, you couldn’ t stand up!
Bones protect important organs inside your body. Tap your head. Can you feel your hard skull? It protects your brain. Your ribs protect your heart, lungs and stomach. Your spine protects your spinal cord.
Around Halloween we see people dressed like skeletons and maybe even some hanging around as decorations. Are skeletons alive? While you are alive, your bones are also very much alive. They grow and change like other parts of your body.
When you get cut or have a bloody nose, blood comes out of your body. Does that mean that someday you could run out of blood? Not a chance, thanks to your bones. You have a thick, jelly-like substance inside your bones, called marrow. The bone marrow makes millions of new blood cells every day.
Standards Link: Life Science: Organ systems work together to protect the body.
Standards Link: Life Science: Animals have structures that serve different functions.
Can you find the two skulls that match?
Standards Link: Life Science: Systems in the body are made up of living cells. Visual discrimination.
How big will your bones grow? People who exercise and eat right will tend to grow bigger. Scientists once took two groups of baby rats. They fed one group hard food and the other soft food. Both diets had the same amount of nourishment. The rats that ate hard food had to chew more and their heads and jaws grew larger, and their bones were heavier.
Standards Link: Health: Food choices affect health and well-being including body composition.
Official Kids Mag www. kidscoop. com © Vicki Whiting October 2025