Your brain is the control centre of your body. It is constantly receiving information about what is going on inside and outside your body. Your brain sorts this information very quickly and sends out messages that tell your body what to do.
Your brain sits at the upper end of your spinal cord. Your spinal cord is a thick rope of nerve cells. It begins at your neck and travels down your backbone. Messages between your brain and the rest of your body travel through your spinal cord along nerve cells.
Your nerves are like tiny telephone wires. They lead from your spinal cord to your muscles and organs. Your body uses them to send messages to and from your brain. There are billions of nerve cells in your body.
Your nerves carry messages from your brain down your spinal cord. They may tell your hands to open a book or to turn a page. Your nerves also carry messages to your brain. If the book falls on your toe, your nerves will tell your brain, and you will know your toe hurts!
Other nerves carry information to your brain from your eyes, ears, nose and mouth. For example, you may know that a lemon is sour and that sugar is sweet. Nerves in your mouth tell your brain what they taste like.
See how well your friends can tell what something is just by gathering information from their hands, ears, and nose. Use a small cloth or paper bag as a “feelie bag”. Put one small thing into the bag at a time, such as an apple, a pair of dice, or a feather. Get your friends to take turns closing their eyes and putting a hand into the bag. Give each friend 10 seconds to feel, smell, and listen to the object. Can they guess what the object is?
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