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Skeletons and Muscles: Build a Body with Skelly

Skeletons and Muscles: Build a Body with Skelly

Learn how skeletons and muscles work together: build a skeleton, test how bones protect you, and make an arm bend using muscles.

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What you'll learn

  • The names of main bones, including the skull, spine, ribcage and femur
  • How the skeleton supports the body and protects the brain, heart and lungs
  • What a joint is, and how hinge and ball-and-socket joints move
  • How tendons join muscles to bones so muscles can pull them
  • Why muscles work in pairs: one contracts while the other relaxes
  • The difference between an endoskeleton, an exoskeleton and no skeleton

What's inside

  1. Build a skeleton Free to try
  2. Support and protect
  3. Joints
  4. Muscle power
  5. Animal skeletons
  6. Big quiz (6 questions)

About this adventure

Skeletons and Muscles is an interactive game that teaches children aged 6–9 how their skeleton supports and protects the body and how muscles make it move. Skelly the skeleton gives one short spoken instruction at a time, so every idea is learned by doing.

Players build a skeleton bone by bone, from the skull and spine to the pelvis and leg bones, then slip it inside a floppy body to see how bones give support. They cover a soft brain with the skull, wrap the ribcage around the heart and lungs, and test the protection with a bouncing ball.

Next they bend hinge joints such as the elbow and knee, attach the biceps and triceps with tendons, and find out that muscles can only pull, so they work in pairs. The game ends with sorting animals by skeleton type and a short quiz.

Questions and answers

What are the three main jobs of the skeleton?

The skeleton supports the body, protects soft organs and helps us move. Bones give the body its shape, the skull guards the brain and the ribcage guards the heart and lungs, while joints let bones bend and turn when muscles pull on them.

How do muscles move bones, in simple words?

Muscles move bones by pulling on them. Each muscle is joined to bone by a tendon, and when it contracts it gets shorter and fatter and pulls the bone. Muscles cannot push, so they work in pairs, like the biceps bending the arm and the triceps straightening it.

What is the difference between an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton?

An endoskeleton is a skeleton inside the body, made of bones, as in humans, fish and birds. An exoskeleton is a hard case on the outside of the body, as on a crab or a beetle. Some animals, such as worms and jellyfish, have no skeleton at all.

What age is this skeletons and muscles game for?

The game is designed for children aged about 6 to 9 and matches the Year 3 science topic on skeletons and muscles in the English national curriculum. Spoken instructions guide every step, so children who are still gaining reading confidence can play along.

How long does the game take, and what does it include?

Playing everything takes about 25 minutes. There are five hands-on chapters, on building a skeleton, support and protection, joints, muscles and animal skeletons, followed by a six-question quiz, and progress is saved so children can carry on later.

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