The Unique Human Body

By
Leticia Sefia
(Age 5)

I love to read and learn about the human body, the parts that I see, like
the mouth, the hands, the feet, the nose, the ears, the nails, the eyes,
the chin, the legs, the neck, and the parts I cannot see like the stomach,
the large intestine, the small intestine, the brain, the rectum, the lungs,
the heart, the bladder, the muscles, the kidneys and the bones.

Every day, my sister Paula and I read a lot of books about the human body
and we also see a lot of stories on the computer. We sometimes watch
some videos on television that are very interesting. Most times I ask my
mom so many questions like, “Where are the kidneys? What happens when
the bladder is full? What happens when the large intestine is so full? And
today the question I asked was about my teeth. Today, I am becoming a
big girl. For about one week my front tooth has been shaking. I read in
the books that my mom got from the library that my 20 milk teeth will
fall and then I will begin to have 32 adult teeth. I was very happy when
my tooth started shaking. Everyone says the tooth fairy will come when I
am asleep and take my tooth and give me some money. I have asked for
Ten Dollars, so by tomorrow I will also be very rich, although I think the
tooth fairy story is fiction, but let’s see anyway.

One day, I asked my mom, “What happens to all the food I eat?” My mom
said she would tell me a story about the Digestive System. She said,
“Once upon a time there was a big girl named Emily. She was hungry all
the time and she liked to eat a lot of food. When she ate food, the food
went through her esophagus, which is a long muscle that pushes the food
down to the stomach”. Then I asked my mom what happens in the stomach
and she said, “The food mixes with acid which kills the germs and turns
the food to Mr. Liquid. Then the good part goes into the small intestine
and gets crushed to smaller bits, the blood takes the food and supplies it
to the body. The left over moves to the large intestine that takes all the
water. The bad part then goes to the rectum and gets pushed out as
poopy, yuck! I used my schema to smell the poopy and I told my mom, “It
smells like chicken mixed with stinky peanut butter and jelly.” Mom said
Emily’s small intestine is very long and it is about 26 feet of tubes all
coiled up. I wanted to also know how my drink gets to my bladder but my
mom said that’s for tomorrow. I wonder why Emily is always hungry, I
know I am now, and I wish I could see my food travel down my body but I
cannot because my skeleton and my skin covers all the parts inside me.

Today I am thinking about the work of the lungs and the heart and how
they work together as a team. Just looking back at what my mom teaches
me, I can use my schema to make a connection between the heart and the
lungs and my soccer team. When I play soccer, I remember that I cannot
do it all by myself, I have to work with my team all the time to win the
game. So it is the same for my heart and my lungs. What makes them a
team? Well, first we breathe in air into our lungs, the lungs collect the
oxygen from the air. Then we breathe out the air we do not need. The
oxygen waits for the blood to come and pick it up. Oxygen is very
important in the human body because our brain needs oxygen so we can
think, our muscles need oxygen so we can do exercises and move. The
heart pumps blood round the body. In the body there are 2 blood vessels
with 2 different colors, the blue color is the vein that you can see on your
skin, the red color is the artery that you cannot see. The blue vessels are
outside, the red vessels are inside and they go all round the body. Did you
know that all the blood vessels in the body are so long that they can go
round the earth twice? Anyway, blue blood rushes out from the heart and
goes to pick oxygen from the lungs then turns red and carries the oxygen
to the muscles and the brain and all the parts of the body. The heart is a
big pump that works even when you are sleeping. The heart beats slowly
when you are sleeping but beats fast when you are playing or exercising.
When I am playing soccer, my heart begins to beat faster like a fast body
machine that sounds like this, “bogum, bogum, bogum” and sometimes I
have to stop to rest when my heart is beating too fast. One day I thought
I was going to throw up because the sun was burning my skin, and mixed
with my heart beating so fast, so I had to stop for a while and drink some
water and oranges.

When my sister and I are playing pretend games at home we sometimes

have to stop when our hearts are beating too fast, mom says it’s the
pulse, if you have good pulse then your heart is working fine, but some
people do not have good pulse and have to go to the doctor. One day I was
watching Spongebob square pants and he looked at Squidward’s heart as it
was beating when he was so excited, so your heart also beats faster when
you are excited. I wonder if the heart ever gets tired because it does not
rest at all, but we need the heart to always work for us to be alive even
when we are sleeping. I think the heart is the most important part of my
body, but it would not be able to get oxygen if it was not working with its
friends, the lungs. What teamwork!

Today I was thinking about the brain. The brain is the boss of the human
body, without the brain, we cannot think, we cannot move, we cannot know
the answers to questions, we cannot taste or smell or touch or hear or
see. There are so many things we cannot do without the boss, the brain.
So how does the brain work? Well I read some books from the library and
I did my research. The brain has many parts that do different things. The
one I like best is the cerebellum. From the pictures I see, it is in the back
of the head. The cerebellum tells my body when and how to move. It talks
to my muscles by sending my nerves messages. “Body move!” the nerves
run fast down my spine to my legs and I move. The brain is pink and soft
and looks like worms, plenty of worms or it looks like a yucky water hose. I
guess it must be slimy but I cannot do anything without it. I wonder what
my brain does when I am sleeping. I got a book from the library in my
school from my teacher that tells what the brain does when you are
sleeping. The brain tells the body to rest and it tells the heart to keep
beating but slowly, very slowly, like in slow motion. The brain also tells my
lungs and nose to breath softly so I can still have oxygen in my body even
when I sleep. The cerebrum is in the front of the brain. It is very
humongous and has 2 different parts. My senses are from the cerebrum,
so I can see, smell, touch, taste and hear because of my cerebrum. There
are other parts of the brain but I don’t know their names, oh I know! The
spinal cord, it’s almost like a long stick that is brown and in my back. It
comes from my brain to the bottom of my back and that is where the
nerves pass through.

I love to play the piano. I am so happy that I have a brain because I would
not have been able to hear the music I play or even play the piano, if I did
not have a brain. Some brains are bigger than others - some animals have
smaller brains because they don’t have to think too much, like the rabbit.
I wonder what color animal brains are? I have to do more research to find
out, because that is not in any of my books. My sister likes to use her left
hand to eat and pick up things some times, but I use my right hand. People
use different sides of the brain to move their hands. If I use my right
hand to write, that means I use the opposite side of my brain which is the
left brain (oh, oh! I found a homonym – Right/Write), but if I use my left
hand to write then I use the right side of my brain. That means my sister
uses the right side of her brain.

Today I learnt about how important my skin is to my human body. At

playtime today, my class went outside because the weather was okay.
Zachary was pretending to be a monster and we were running away from
him. All of a sudden, I tripped and fell “boink” on my hands. My right hand
was okay but my left hand got a cut and blood came out, but I was not
worried because I know that my body will make more blood. Even though I
was crying because it was so painful, I learnt that skin is very important
to my body. Without my skin I would have hurt all the muscles and veins
inside my hands and maybe even my skeleton. Meanwhile, my blood stopped
coming out because the white blood cells came to protect the cut on my
left hand and also to put a sword on germs so that I don’t get sick. When
I fell, someone took me to the nurse and I asked the nurse, “Am I going
home now?” and the nurse said, “No, wash your hands so they would be
clean and I will put a band aid on the skin so germs cannot get in.”

Also I see that people have different colors of skin, some people don’t
look like me, some people have brown skin, some have tanned skin and
some have light brown skin like my mom, my sister and I and some have
dark brown skin just like my daddy, but we all have a human body.

Have you ever wondered what holds your body up? It is the skeleton. My
body needs something to hold it up. Without the bones, another name for
the skeleton, I would just fold up into a floppy heap. My skeleton also
protects some very important bits and pieces inside my body, like my
heart and lungs. Did you know that the human skeleton is made up of more
than 200 bones? In one book I read it says that the human body of an
adult has 206 bones. Wow that is a lot! I did not know that human beings
had so many bones. Also without the skeleton, our muscles would have
nothing to hold them. The skeleton gives our muscles a strong place to
hang themselves. The brain is also very important for thinking and a lot of
things that the human body does, but without the skull, the brain would
be wobbly. So the skull is part of the skeleton that protects me. The
longest bone in my body and all human body is in our legs and is called the
femur. The spinal cord holds my back upright; it has a lot of small bones
joined together and without the spinal cord human beings would walk
wobbly. So it is very important in my body. Also my fingers and my feet
have a lot of small bones joined together so that I can move my feet and
hands very well in different directions. So the human skeleton is very
very important and we always have to take care of ourselves. Mom says I
should always drink plenty of milk as that helps my bones get strong,
because milk has plenty of calcium, which is what my bones are made of.

Today I was thinking about my senses, especially the eyes. Why do I have
two eyes? Well first of all my eyes are like jelly balls. I wonder what’s
interesting about the eyes? What is most interesting is how the image
my eye sees is turned upside down in the back of the eye in my brain.
When I cry tears come out of my eyes. I wonder where tears come from?
Well tears are made in special tubes in the eyes. Tears also keep my eyes
clean and as for having two eyes, I guess it is so that I can see better and
see things in all directions.
Today I was curious about taste. I saw my dad and sister eating and I
interviewed my dad, “What are you eating?” “I am having my dinner” my
dad said, then I asked, “How does it taste?” and he said, “It tastes good,
a bit salty and hot, but I can have all these feelings with my tongue which
helps me to tell the taste of anything I eat, my tongue tells me if what I
am eating is sweet, bitter, sour, hot, cold, spicy, salty, or tasty, my tongue
is a very important part of my body.” I said thank you and had to share my
interview. My sister just got up from the table after a few spoons
because she does not like to eat much so I could not interview her.

Another interesting part the human body is the ear. The ear is important
because without it, I cannot hear my sister calling me, play the piano or
hear my dad calling for breakfast or calling for lunch or dinner. I also just
yawned aloud and without my ear I could not have heard that. And imagine
how I would have been able to watch TV without my ears. I love to play
the piano but without my ears I would not be able to hear the tunes I
play. Now what are the ears? There are parts of the ear we see, and
parts we do not see. The part of the ear we see is shaped so that it can
collect sounds. The sound it collects travels along the ear canal to the
eardrum. The sound causes the eardrum to vibrate like a drum. Next to
the eardrums are the three small bones, hammer, anvil and stirrup. One
book I read said the smallest bone in the human body is found in the ear.
It is the stirrup. There is a part of the ear that looks just like a seashell
called the cochlea. These have the nerves that pick up the sound. The
nerves are like electric wires that carry the sound to the brain, and that
is how we hear. Our ears can listen to very loud sounds but if they are too
loud, the sounds can damage the cochlea and then we would not be able to
hear.

How about touching? My skin feels the things I touch. When I am busy
doing something like arts and crafts, or touching a book, my skin feels
these things. When I am eating or drinking, if the food or drink is hot, I
feel it through my skin. If it is hot, it burns my skin, and if it is cold or
ice, my hands get frozen. I can also feel things, like if something is rough
or hard or soft or smooth. When I rub my hands together it gets very hot
because of friction and when I stop, my hands get cold again. I can also
touch people’s skin to find out if they are hot or cold. If my sister is not
feeling well sometimes, her skin gets hot and my mom uses the
thermometer to check her temperature.

How does hair grow? Why do some people have longer hairs than others?
I always tell my mom every morning that I want my hair to be long like
Sophie’s, Nicole’s, Vidhi’s, Arianna’s, Amanda’s, Gia’s, Joleen’s, Christina’s
and Alex’s hair. Some of my friends have short hair though. Well my mom
says that people have different genes that make them grow different.
Some people have genes that give them long straight hair, while others
like me have not too long curly hair. My mom made my hair though with
long extensions that makes me feel good. I wonder what hair is made of?
Hair and nails are both made of a tough protein called keratin. Hair grows
on our head and on our body. When we are cold or scared, the hair on our
bodies point up. When we are cold, the hair on our body helps to protect
us from the cold. Some people like their hair short especially boys. My
dad cuts his hair every time, although some boys like their hair long but
not in my class.

I have really enjoyed writing about the human body. I still have a lot of
questions to ask like; How does the human hair grow? Why do humans
blink their eyes? Why do we sneeze and sniff? What is different in the
human brain and animal brain? What color are animal brains? And so many
other questions but I will keep doing my research in the library as I grow
up.