Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

The younger one has been learning about the parts of the body at school and the teachers taught her the name of some bones like ribs, cranium, vertebrae etc. A few years ago, I was a big fan of the TV show Bones, a must watch show by the way. Over the years I learned the names of various human bones from the show and mentioned them to the younger one. She liked some of the names, but was most fascinated by the word patella, the scientific name for the knee cap and kept repeating it over and over again, sounding excruciatingly cute.

My older one was amused that the upper arm bone, called the humerus, connects to the elbow joint, known as the funny bone. (Humerus, funny bone, get it?)

With all this bone chatter going on in the house I wrote a poem my girls thoroughly enjoyed. So here I am, sharing it with you.

The Bone Song

The human body

is built of bones

just like a house may be

built of stones

Some bones are tiny

Some are long

But all of them help us,

work and be strong

The funny bone is where the humerus

meets the radius and ulna

while the femur, fibula and tibia

hang out at the patella

The femur in the thigh,

is the biggest bone around,

while the stapes, the smallest,

helps us hear every sound.

A dozen pairs of ribs,

the sternum keeping them apart

together form a cage

to protect the lungs and the heart

A vertebral column is a must

For every vertebrate

From atlas to coccyx they help us

sit and stand straight

The carpals, metacarpals

and phalanges work together

so we can type, carve, sew,

and write with a feather

The skull keeps the brain,

as good as new,

while maxilla and mandible,

help us chew.

Now we are done,

with our little bone song.

We hope you don’t think,

it lasted too long.

I have linked to the wikipedia pages of some of the bones, but you can check them all out on wikipedia, see what they look like, and learn how they work. What fun it is to have access to so much information at your phalanges tips ;)