Describe the Structure and Functions of the Human Skeleton

Did you know we have roughly 206 bones in our body?!

These 206 bones fit together to form our skeleton.

Our bones are pretty awesome; believe it or not, they’re actually living! I guess when we think of bones, we tend to think of bones that have been dead and buried for thousands of years, like dinosaur bones! Bones are living because they can grow and if we were to accidentally break, or fracture a bone, it would be able to repair itself. 

Did you know that the femur found in our thigh, is actually the longest and strongest bone in the body? The femur helps to carry our body weight and allows us to move around easily. This is known as the function or job, of this particular bone. Our bones can have different functions.

The bones in our skeleton are all important of course, but some of the main bones to remember are our vertebrae which are small bones that make up our backbone, the rib cage in our chest, our skull and as mentioned before, the femur in our thigh.

Can you find these bones in the image above?

The bones mentioned above are important because they have super-important functions. For example, the backbone is made up of smaller bones called vertebrae. The backbone's main function is to protect the spinal cord which sends nerve signals to different parts of the body.  

The skull's function is to protect the brain, and the rib cage protects the lungs, heart and other internal organs such as the liver. All of these organs are needed to keep us alive so they need to be protected.

The skeleton also provides us with support. For example our backbone allows us to stand upright. 

Another function of our skeleton is to allow movement. Some of our bones often meet at points called joints. These allow us to bend and twist, for example our knee cap (or the patella) allows us to bend our legs. 

Our bones also help to make our blood. Millions of blood cells die every second. Inside our longer bones we have bone marrow - this is where new red blood cells and white blood cells are made.

In this activity, we're going to look at how our skeleton is arranged and the functions of the skeleton.