Health and Safety
Muscles
You have 650 muscles in your body and they are constantly at work. Some muscles are controlled by you, while others do their job without you thinking about them at all. Your muscles make up about ½ of your body's weight. Wow, muscles are pretty heavy!
Muscles always pull; they never push. Your muscles are even pulling on your bones when you are pushing on something. Muscles are amazing!
Muscles come in many sizes. The smallest muscle in your body moves one of the tiny bones in your ear. This muscle is so small that we would 20 of them laid in a row to form one inch. But the largest and most powerful muscles are in your back, near your spine. These muscles help you stand up, plus give us power to lift and push things. Aren't you glad you have muscles?
Your face also has many muscles in it. That is why we can make many different faces, smile, frown, raise our eyebrows, and even wiggle our noses. Remember, the tongue is a muscle too. We use 43 muscles to frown, but only 17 muscles to smile. I hope you will be smiling today! Let some of those muscles rest.
Today I want you to think about one day in January when you were cold and shivering on the way to school. You do feel warmer when you shiver but do you know why? This warmth comes from muscles tightening and relaxing very quickly. Working your muscles does give you body heat. So today, when you are out at recess playing soccer and feeling warm, remember your muscles are giving off most of that body heat.
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