Your Amazing Skeleton

Your skeleton is the frame of bones inside your body. It holds you upright, lets you move, and protects the soft parts inside you. Without it you would be a wobbly blob with no shape at all — your skeleton is what gives your body its structure.

Your bones do three big jobs. First, they support you, like the poles holding up a tent. Second, they protect your softest, most precious parts — your skull is a helmet for your brain. Third, they work with your muscles so you can move, because muscles need something firm to pull against.

Lots of people think bones are dry and dead, like sticks. That is a common mistake! Bones are alive. They have blood vessels and nerves inside them, they can grow, and they can mend themselves if they break. Eating foods with calcium, like milk and cheese, helps keep them strong.

Where two bones meet is called a joint. Joints like your knees, elbows and knuckles let you bend, twist and move in all sorts of ways. Some joints, like your shoulder, swing all the way round like a ball spinning in a cup. Others, like your elbow, only bend one way, like a door hinge.