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KidsHealth.org: How Your Lungs Work

Answer the following questions that correlate to the video.

Ancient Mesopotamia Geography

1. What provided resources to the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia?

2. Describe the Northern region

3. Describe the eastern region

4. What resources were found in the Zagros Mountains?

5. Why was the Taurus Mountains important?

6. Describe the West and Southern region

7. What is Mesopotamia between?

8. Why did settlers choose this area to create city-states?

9. Describe the differences between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

10. Name one of the earliest civilizations.

11. From the metal production map, what can be said about Ancient Mesopotamia?

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Please enable Javascript when viewing video pages. Answer the following questions that correlate to the video. Ancient Mesopotamia Geography 1. What provided resources to the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia? 2. Describe the Northern region 3. Describe the eastern region 4. What resources were found in the Zagros Mountains? 5.

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How your digestive system works - Emma Bryce

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How your muscular system works - Emma Bryce

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Respiratory System | The Dr. Binocs Show | Learn Videos For Kids

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Bones | The Dr. Binocs Show | Learn Videos For Kids

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Animals constantly use their senses to gather information about their surroundings. Nerves in the body pick up this information. In most animals the nerves send the...

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Your heart is really a muscle. It's located a little to the left of the middle of your chest, and it's about the size of your fist.

Your heart is sort of like a pump, or two pumps in one. It pumps blood around your body. Blood provides your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs. It also carries away waste.

The right side of your heart receives blood from the body and pumps it to the lungs.

The left side of the heart receives blood from the lungs and pumps it out to the body.

How Does the Heart Beat?

Before each beat, your heart fills with blood. Then it contracts to pump the blood along. When the heart contracts, it squeezes - try squeezing your hand into a fist. That's sort of like what your heart does so it can pump the blood. Your heart does this all day and all night, all the time. The heart is one hard worker!

What Are the Parts of the Heart?

The heart is made up of four different blood-filled areas, and each of these areas is called a chamber. There are two chambers on each side of the heart. One chamber is on the top and one chamber is on the bottom.

The two chambers on top are called the atria (say: AY-tree-uh). The heart has a left atrium and a right atrium.

The two chambers on the bottom are called the ventricles (say: VEN-trih-kulz). The heart has a left ventricle and a right ventricle.

What Are the Atria? And What's An Atrium?

The atria are the chambers that fill with the blood returning to the heart from the body and lungs. If you're talking only about one, call it an atrium.

What Are the Ventricles?

The ventricles are the chambers that pump out the blood to the body and lungs.

What's the Septum?

Running down the middle of the heart is a thick wall of muscle called the septum (say: SEP-tum). The septum's job is to separate the left side and the right side of the heart.

The atria and ventricles work as a team - the atria fill with blood, then dump it into the ventricles. The ventricles then squeeze, pumping blood out of the heart. While the ventricles are squeezing, the atria refill and get ready for the next contraction. So when the blood gets pumped, how does it know which way to go?

What Do the Heart Valves Do?

Your blood relies on four special valves inside the heart. A valve lets something in and keeps it there by closing - think of walking through a door. The door shuts behind you and keeps you from going backward.

Two of the heart valves are the mitral (say: MY-trul) valve and the tricuspid (say: try-KUS-pid) valve. They let blood flow from the atria to the ventricles.

The other two are called the aortic (say: ay-OR-tik) valve and pulmonary (say: PUL-muh-ner-ee) valve, and they're in charge of controlling the flow as the blood leaves the heart.

These valves all work to keep the blood flowing forward. They open up to let the blood move ahead, then they close quickly to keep the blood from flowing backward.

What's Circulation? And How Does Blood Circulate?

Movement of blood through the heart and around the body is called circulation (say: sur-kyoo-LAY-shun), and your heart is really good at it - it takes less than 60 seconds to pump blood to every cell in your body.

Your body needs this steady supply of blood to keep it working right. Blood delivers oxygen to all the body's cells. To stay alive, a person needs healthy, living cells. Without oxygen, these cells would die. If that oxygen-rich blood doesn't circulate as it should, a person could die.

The left side of your heart sends that oxygen-rich blood out to the body. The body takes the oxygen out of the blood and uses it in your body's cells. When the cells use the oxygen, they make carbon dioxide and other stuff that gets carried away by the blood. It's like the blood delivers lunch to the cells and then has to pick up the trash!

The returning blood enters the right side of the heart. The right ventricle pumps the blood to the lungs for a little freshening up. In the lungs, carbon dioxide is removed from the blood and sent out of the body when we exhale. What's next? An inhale, of course, and a fresh breath of oxygen that can enter the blood to start the process again. And remember, it all happens in about a minute!

What Do Arteries Do? And What Do Veins Do?

You probably guessed that the blood just doesn't slosh around your body once it leaves the heart. It moves through many tubes called arteries and veins, which together are called blood vessels. These blood vessels are attached to the heart.

The blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart are called arteries.

The blood vessels that carry blood back to the heart are called veins

Listen to the Lub-Dub

When you go for a checkup, your doctor uses a stethoscope to listen carefully to your heart. A healthy heart makes a lub-dub sound with each beat. This sound comes from the valves shutting on the blood inside the heart.

The first sound (the lub) happens when the mitral and tricuspid valves close. The next sound (the dub) happens when the aortic and pulmonary valves close after the blood has been squeezed out of the heart. Next time you go to the doctor, ask if you can listen to the lub-dub, too.

How Can I Find My Pulse?

Even though your heart is inside you, there is a cool way to know it's working from the outside. It's your pulse. You can find your pulse by lightly pressing on the skin anywhere there's a large artery running just beneath your skin. Two good places to find it are on the side of your neck and the inside of your wrist, just below the thumb.

You'll know that you've found your pulse when you can feel a small beat under your skin. Each beat is caused by the contraction (squeezing) of your heart. If you want to find out what your heart rate is, use a watch with a second hand and count how many beats you feel in 1 minute. When you are resting, you will probably feel between 70 and 100 beats per minute.

When you run around a lot, your body needs a lot more oxygen-filled blood. Your heart pumps faster to supply the oxygen-filled blood that your body needs. You may even feel your heart pounding in your chest. Try running in place or jumping rope for a few minutes and taking your pulse again - now how many beats do you count in 1 minute?

How Can I Keep My Heart Healthy?

Most kids are born with a healthy heart and it's important to keep yours in good shape. Here are some things that you can do to help keep your heart happy:

Remember that your heart is a muscle. If you want it to be strong, you need to exercise it. How do you do it? By being active in a way that gets you huffing and puffing, like jumping rope, dancing, or playing basketball. Try to be active every day for at least 30 minutes! An hour would be even better for your heart!

Eat a variety of healthy foods and avoid foods high in unhealthy fats, such as saturated fats and trans fats (reading food labels can help you figure out if your favorite snacks contain these unhealthy ingredients).

Try to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

Avoid sugary soft drinks and fruit drinks.

Don't smoke. It can damage the heart and blood vessels.

Your heart deserves to be loved for all the work it does. It started pumping blood before you were born and will continue pumping throughout your whole life.

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Your Heart & Circulatory System (for Kids)

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Your heart is a hard-working muscle. Find out more in this article for kids.

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What Are the Lungs and Respiratory System?

The lungs and respiratory system allow us to breathe. They:

This exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide is called respiration.

How Do the Lungs and Respiratory System Work?

The cells in our bodies need oxygen to stay alive. Carbon dioxide is made in our bodies as cells do their jobs.

The lungs and respiratory system allow oxygen in the air to be taken into the body, while also letting the body get rid of carbon dioxide in the air breathed out.

When you breathe in, the diaphragm moves downward toward the abdomen, and the rib muscles pull the ribs upward and outward. This makes the chest cavity bigger and pulls air through the nose or mouth into the lungs.

In exhalation, the diaphragm moves upward and the chest wall muscles relax, causing the chest cavity to get smaller and push air out of respiratory system through the nose or mouth.

Every few seconds, with each inhalation, air fills a large portion of the millions of alveoli. In a process called diffusion, oxygen moves from the alveoli to the blood through the capillaries (tiny blood vessels) lining the alveolar walls. Once in the bloodstream, oxygen gets picked up by the hemoglobin in red blood cells. This oxygen-rich blood then flows back to the heart, which pumps it through the arteries to oxygen-hungry tissues throughout the body.

In the tiny capillaries of the body tissues, oxygen is freed from the hemoglobin and moves into the cells. Carbon dioxide, made by the cells as they do their work, moves out of the cells into the capillaries, where most of it dissolves in the plasma of the blood. Blood rich in carbon dioxide then returns to the heart via the veins. From the heart, this blood is pumped to the lungs, where carbon dioxide passes into the alveoli to be exhaled.

What Are the Parts of the Respiratory System?

The respiratory system includes:

How Does the Respiratory System Work?

Air enters the respiratory system through the nose or the mouth. If it goes in the nostrils (also called nares), the air is warmed and humidified. Tiny hairs called cilia (say: SIL-ee-uh) protect the nasal passageways and other parts of the respiratory tract, filtering out dust and other particles that enter the nose through the breathed air.

What's the Pharynx?

The two openings of the airway (the nasal cavity and the mouth) meet at the pharynx ( throat) at the back of the nose and mouth. The pharynx (say: FAR-inks) is part of the digestive system as well as the respiratory system because it carries both food and air.

What's the Esophagus? What's the Epiglottis?

At the bottom of the pharynx, this pathway divides in two:

one for food - the esophagus (say: ih-SAH-fuh-gus), which leads to the stomach

one for air - the epiglottis. The epiglottis (say: eh-pih-GLAH-tus), is a small flap of tissue that covers the air-only passage when we swallow, keeping food and liquid from going into the lungs.

What's the Larynx? What Are the Vocal Cords?

The larynx (voice box) is the top part of epiglottis (the air-only pipe). This short tube contains a pair of vocal cords, which vibrate to make sounds.

What's the Trachea?

The trachea (windpipe) is the continuation of the airway below the larynx. The walls of the trachea (say: TRAY-kee-uh) are strengthened by stiff rings of The trachea, or windpipe, is the continuation of the airway below the larynx.

The walls of the trachea are strengthened by stiff rings of cartilage to keep it open. The trachea is also lined with cilia, which sweep fluids and foreign particles out of the airway so that they stay out of the lungs.

What Are Bronchi? And What Are Bronchioles?

At its bottom end, the trachea divides into left and right air tubes called bronchi (pronounced: BRAHN-kye), which connect to the lungs. Within the lungs, the bronchi branch into smaller bronchi and even smaller tubes called bronchioles (say: BRAHN-kee-olz).

What Are Alveoli?

Bronchioles end in tiny air sacs called alveoli (say: al-VEE-uh-lie), where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide actually takes place. Each person has hundreds of millions of alveoli in their lungs. This network of alveoli, bronchioles, and bronchi is known as the bronchial tree.

What's the Pleura?

The lungs also contain elastic tissues that let them inflate and deflate without losing shape. They're covered by a thin lining called the pleura (say: PLUR-uh).

What's the Thorax?

The chest cavity, or thorax (say: THOR-aks), is the airtight box that houses the bronchial tree, lungs, heart, and other structures.

What's the Diaphragm?

The top and sides of the thorax are formed by the ribs and attached muscles, and the bottom is formed by a large muscle called the diaphragm (say: DYE-uh-fram). The chest walls form a protective cage around the lungs and other contents of the chest cavity.

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Your Lungs & Respiratory System (for Kids) - Nemours KidsHealth

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What’s something kids are doing all day, every day? Breathing! Your lungs are large and in charge of breathing, so read all about them in this article.

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Digestive System

Watch this movie about your digestive system, the system that handles the food you eat.

What's Saliva (Spit) Do?

Even before you eat, when you smell a tasty food, see it, or think about it, digestion begins. Saliva (say: suh-LYE-vuh), or spit, begins to form in your mouth.

When you do eat, the saliva breaks down the chemicals in the food a bit, which helps make the food mushy and easy to swallow. Your tongue helps out, pushing the food around while you chew with your teeth. When you're ready to swallow, the tongue pushes a tiny bit of mushed-up food called a bolus (say: BO-luss) toward the back of your throat and into the opening of your esophagus, the second part of the digestive tract.

What's the Esophagus?

The esophagus (say: ih-SOF-eh-guss) is like a stretchy pipe that's about 10 inches (25 centimeters) long. It moves food from the back of your throat to your stomach. But also at the back of your throat is your windpipe, which allows air to come in and out of your body. When you swallow a small ball of mushed-up food or liquids, a special flap called the epiglottis (say: ep-ih-GLOT-iss) flops down over the opening of your windpipe to make sure the food enters the esophagus and not the windpipe.

If you've ever drunk something too fast, started to cough, and heard someone say that your drink "went down the wrong way," the person meant that it went down your windpipe by mistake. This happens when the epiglottis doesn't have enough time to flop down, and you cough involuntarily (without thinking about it) to clear your windpipe.

Once food has entered the esophagus, it doesn't just drop right into your stomach. Instead, muscles in the walls of the esophagus move in a wavy way to slowly squeeze the food through the esophagus. This takes about 2 or 3 seconds.

What Does the Stomach Do?

Your stomach, which is attached to the end of the esophagus, is a stretchy sack shaped like the letter J. It has three important jobs:

1. to store the food you've eaten

2. to break down the food into a liquidy mixture

3. to slowly empty that liquidy mixture into the small intestine

The stomach is like a mixer, churning and mashing together all the small balls of food that came down the esophagus into smaller and smaller pieces. It does this with help from the strong muscles in the walls of the stomach and gastric (say: GAS-trik) juices that also come from the stomach's walls. In addition to breaking down food, gastric juices also help kill bacteria that might be in the eaten food.

Onward to the small intestine!

What Does the Small Intestine Do?

The small intestine (say: in-TESS-tin) is a long tube that's about 1½ inches to 2 inches (about 3.5 to 5 centimeters) around, and it's packed inside you beneath your stomach. If you stretched out an adult's small intestine, it would be about 22 feet long (6.7 meters) - that's like 22 notebooks lined up end to end, all in a row!

The small intestine breaks down the food mixture even more so your body can absorb all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. The grilled chicken on your pizza is full of proteins - and a little fat - and the small intestine can help extract them with a little help from three friends: the pancreas (say: PAN-kree-uss), liver, and gallbladder.

Those organs send different juices to the first part of the small intestine. These juices help to digest food and allow the body to absorb nutrients. The pancreas makes juices that help the body digest fats and protein. A juice from the liver called bile helps to absorb fats into the bloodstream. And the gallbladder serves as a warehouse for bile, storing it until the body needs it.

Your food may spend as long as 4 hours in the small intestine and will become a very thin, watery mixture. It's time well spent because, at the end of the journey, the nutrients from your pizza, orange, and milk can pass from the intestine into the blood. Once in the blood, your body is closer to benefiting from the complex carbohydrates in the pizza crust, the vitamin C in your orange, the protein in the chicken, and the calcium in your milk.

Next stop for these nutrients: the liver! And the leftover waste - parts of the food that your body can't use - goes on to the large intestine.

How Does the Liver Help With Digestion?

The nutrient-rich blood comes directly to the liver for processing. The liver filters out harmful substances or wastes, turning some of the waste into more bile. The liver even helps figure out how many nutrients will go to the rest of the body, and how many will stay behind in storage. For example, the liver stores certain vitamins and a type of sugar your body uses for energy.

What Does the Large Intestine Do?

At 3 or 4 inches around (about 7 to 10 centimeters), the large intestine is fatter than the small intestine and it's almost the last stop on the digestive tract. Like the small intestine, it is packed into the body, and would measure 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) long if you spread it out.

What's the Appendix?

The large intestine has a tiny tube with a closed end coming off it called the appendix (say: uh-PEN-dix). It's part of the digestive tract, but it doesn't seem to do anything, though it can cause big problems because it sometimes gets infected and needs to be removed.

Like we mentioned, after most of the nutrients are removed from the food mixture there is waste left over - stuff your body can't use. This stuff needs to be passed out of the body. Can you guess where it ends up? Well, here's a hint: It goes out with a flush.

What's the Colon?

Before it goes, it passes through the part of the large intestine called the colon (say: CO-lun), which is where the body gets its last chance to absorb the water and some minerals into the blood. As the water leaves the waste product, what's left gets harder and harder as it keeps moving along, until it becomes a solid. Yep, it's poop (also called stool or a bowel movement).

What's the Rectum? And What's the Anus?

The large intestine pushes the poop into the rectum (say: REK-tum), the very last stop on the digestive tract. The solid waste stays here until you are ready to go to the bathroom. When you go to the bathroom, you are getting rid of this solid waste by pushing it through the anus (say: AY-nus). There's the flush we were talking about!

How Can I Keep My Digestive System Healthy?

You can help your digestive system by drinking water and eating a healthy diet that includes foods rich in fiber. High-fiber foods, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, make it easier for poop to pass through your system.

The digestive system is a pretty important part of your body. Without it, you couldn't get the nutrients you need to grow properly and stay healthy. And next time you sit down to lunch, you'll know where your food goes - from start to finish!

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The digestive system breaks down the food you eat. Learn how in this article for kids.

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The human digestive system - National Geographic Kids

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Take a journey through the human digestive system and discover how your mouth, stomach, intestines, pancreas and other body parts hep break down your food!