Skeletons & Muscles
Identify that humans and some other animals have skeletons and muscles for support, protection, and movement
What a learner can do afterwards
- Name the three functions of the skeleton: support, protection, movement
- Identify that muscles are attached to bones and pull to create movement
- Give examples of bones protecting organs (skull protects brain, ribs protect heart and lungs)
The lesson
Inside your body, bones link together to make your skeleton. Muscles wrap around your bones. Together they do three jobs: they hold your body up, they protect your soft parts inside, and they let you move.
Support means holding you up. Your skeleton works like the frame inside a tent. Without the frame, the tent would flop to the ground. Without your skeleton, your body could not stand or sit up straight.
When Maya trips and falls, her skull protects her brain from the bump. Her ribs curl around her chest like a cage, keeping her heart and lungs safe underneath.
Bend your arm and feel the front of it. That firm bump is a muscle pulling on the bone below your elbow. Muscles can only pull, never push, so they work in pairs to bend and straighten your arm.
Your skeleton and muscles work together: bones support and protect you, and muscles pull on bones to make you move.
Watch it
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.