Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered what’s underneath your skin? It’s your organs! Your skin, your heart, your brain, your lungs and many other

things are all organs.

This picture shows the

main organs of your body. Let’s see if you know

what they are called.

brain

lungsheart

liver stomach

small intestine

large intestine

skinLet’s have a

look at them in more detail.

Your brain is about the size of a small cauliflower. It sends messages to the rest of your body using the spinal cord. It is a bit like your body’s own

control centre!

Your brain is protected by your skull and is

surrounded by fluid to cushion it if you fall

over.

Your brain needs oxygen from blood to work properly.

3,500 pints of blood flow through the brain every day!

The brain has two sides that control different things in our body.

The right side of

the brain is the

creative

side.

The left side of

the brain is the logical

side.

There are areas of the brain that help with all of our senses, our behaviour, our

speech, our memory and our movements.

Your body needs oxygen to stay alive. When you

breathe in, oxygen enters your lungs. The

oxygen goes into your bloodstream

through your lungs and is

carried to the parts of the body

that need it.

Your lungs take up most of the space in

your chest.

They are protected by your ribcage.

Your left lung is smaller than your right lung so that there is enough space for your

heart.

Your lungs allow you to take in fresh

air and get rid of stale air.

Your heart is like a pump but it 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.

The heart sends blood around your body. The

blood provides your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs.

The right side of your heart receives

blood from the body and pumps it

to the lungs.

The left side of the heart does the

exact opposite: It receives blood

from the lungs and pumps it out to the

body.

The liver is the largest organ inside your

body.

The liver helps the body store energy

and gets rid of toxins.

When you are fully grown your liver will

weigh 1.5 kilograms, but by the time you are 60 years old it will have

shrunk to 0.8 kilograms! Don’t worry – it will still

do its job!

When you eat food passes into your stomach and

stays there for two-and-a-half to three hours.

Your stomach muscles squash the food until it is a creamy pulp.

Your stomach produces juices to

break down the food and kill germs you

may have swallowed.

Your intestines are in two parts.

The small intestine

The large intestine

Your small intestine is a narrow coiled tube that is about 6 or 7 metres long. When food leaves your stomach it comes

here so that nutrients can be absorbed

back into the body.Water and food that

cannot be digested pass into your large intestine and come out of your

body as waste.

Your skin is the body’s biggest

organ!

Your skin is very

important. It covers and

protects everything inside your

body.

Skin: protects our bodies

helps keep our bodies at just the right temperature

allows us to have the sense

of touch 

The skin is tough and strong, just right for

covering your body and protecting it. Skin is

always renewing itself . Though you can't see it

happening, every minute of the day we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead

skin cells off the surface of our skin.

Our diagram looked showed only some of the organs in our body. There are

many others, too many for us to look at now. Let’s just look at a couple more

that are important.

The kidneys are every bit as important as the

heart. You need at least one kidney to live!

Kidneys come in pairs. If you've ever seen a kidney bean,

then you have a pretty good idea what the kidneys

look like. Each kidney 13

centimeters long and about 8

centimeters wide - about the size of a

computer mouse.

One of the main jobs of the kidneys is to filter the

waste out of the blood. Most of the waste is just stuff your body doesn't need because it already has enough. The waste

has to go somewhere; this is where the kidneys come

in. The waste that is collected combines with

water (which is also filtered out of the kidneys) to make urine. This travels

to the bladder.

The bladder

The bladder is a bag that collects the urine that leaves the

kidneys. When your bladder is about half full it sends message to your brain and you go to

the toilet.Drinking plenty of water and avoiding rich food

helps keep your bladder and kidneys in good

condition.

I hope you have enjoyed looking at some of your body’s organs. Let’s see how many

you remember.brain

liver

lungsheart

stomach

large intestinesmall intestine

skin

kidneys

bladder

Produced by

Bev Evans

2006