Skip to content
KinPilot™Learn & Explore
Menu
← TopicsReading path →

Grades K–2 · Organisms

What holds us up underneath our skin?

You can stand with a firm shape because bones form a supporting skeleton under your skin and muscles. These hard parts are living parts of you, growing and changing as you do.

Different bones protect different soft parts. Your skull surrounds your brain. Your curved ribs help protect your heart and lungs. Your backbone supports your body and surrounds the spinal cord, an important route for messages between the brain and body.

Skull, Ribs and Backbone label bones that protect different soft parts. The separate limb sections also show that this supporting frame has connections where movement can happen.

O66 visual explanationA simplified front-view skeleton highlights the ribs, which helps protect the heart and lungs. Bones are living tissue and form a supporting frame. Several bones and ribs are omitted, not absent from the body.A living frame supports and protects usSkullRibsBackboneHighlighted: protects heart and lungsSome bones and ribs are left out for clarity.

In the diagramA living frame supports and protects usSkullRibsBackboneHighlighted: protects heart and lungsSome bones and ribs are left out for clarity.

The skull, ribs and backbone protect different soft parts. Connected bones form a living support frame with joints that also allow movement.

Bones meet at joints, so a supporting frame can also bend. At movable joints such as an elbow, muscles pull bones to change their angle. Connected hard parts and movable meeting places let the same skeleton support your body and help it move.

About this explanation

Starting knowledge: Know that the brain is in the head and the chest contains organs.

Sources

  • NIAMS — What Is Bone?
  • National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases — Health Lesson: Learning About Joints
← Grades K–2 topics