BoomeranG AT H O M E E D I T I O N
YOUR PLACE FOR FUN, GAMES & MORE.
ISSUE #4 • May 2020
FUN AND GAMES WHILE AT HOME
BOOMERANG | ISSUE #4 | ©2020 | PUBLISHED BY HANCOCK HEALTH
In This Issue Coronavirus: What Kids Can Do.............3-4 You might be wondering how you can help.
I’m Growing Up But Am I Normal............4-5 Everyone is different, there’s no one type of normal.
Catch the Penny............................................ 6-7 Don’t let your eye fool you!
Tasty Tots..............................................................8 A recipe the whole family will love.
Your Heart & Circulatory System.......9-11 Want to konw how to keep your heart happy?
Games, Puzzles & Jokes................................12
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WHAT YOU CaN dO
CORONAVIRUS: WHAT KIDS CAN DO When you do these 3 things, you’re doing your part to stop coronavirus.
Washing hands isn’t so hard. But it can be hard to stay home for now. It means not being with people you like to be with. And not going places you like to go.
With all the talk about coronavirus, you might be wondering what kids can do. Here are the 3 best ways everyone (including kids) can help stop coronavirus:
Wash your hands. Use soap and water. Wash for 20 seconds. You can count slowly to 20. Or you can sing the happy birthday song twice. Be sure to wash the tops of your hands, and in between your fingers. Get your thumbs, and even your fingernails.
Always wash your hands after you use the bathroom. Wash them whenever you come in from outside, before you eat, after you play with a pet. Wash your hands after you blow your nose, sneeze or cough.
Cover your sneeze or cough. Sneeze or cough into your elbow, not your hand. Then wash your hands anyway. It’s always fun to drown a germ with soap and water!
Stay home when you can. Schools are still closed. Many other places are starting to open but with very few people allowed inside. Experts are asking people to stay home. When people stay at home and don’t visit others, germs can’t spread.
So here are 3 more things kids can do. These things help you cope with stay-at-home time: Notice your feelings. All the things you miss, like playdates, school trips, and sports can make you feel sad. But it won’t be forever. For now, you can feel better if you stay in touch with people you miss. Talk on the phone or visit by video. You can draw pictures that show how you feel. Or talk about it with someone you feel close to. Do things you enjoy. While you’re waiting for this stay-at-home time to pass, do things to have fun. You can do fun things by yourself or with the people you live with. When you’re indoors, you can play games, read, do puzzles, make art, write a story, do a craft. You can dance, do yoga, build, learn, and play or listen to music. Go outside to ride bikes, run, walk, or hike. Take some chalk and write happy messages on trails and sidewalks for other people to see.
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Be kind and helpful. All the change caused by coronavirus can make kids and adults feel stressed. Kids can help by doing little things that make a big difference.
Here are a few ideas: 1 Help take care of a little brother or sister. Keep them happy. Read to them and play with them.
2 Put your stuff away. Make your bed. Do your best with schoolwork. Ask (nicely) for help. Use kind words. Take your bath or shower without a fuss. Share. Offer to help with meals or cleanup.
3 Show love to your family. Give hugs. Help take care of your pet.
4 Be kind to yourself too. Relax. Get outside to play when you can. When you’re kind and helpful, it’s nice for others in your family. And it helps you feel good too.
Reviewed by: D'Arcy Lyness, PhD Date reviewed: April 2020 Nemours Note: All information on KidsHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor. © 1995-2020 The Nemours Foundation. All rights reserved.
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Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD Date reviewed: October 2014 Nemours Note: All information on KidsHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor. © 1995-2020 The Nemours Foundation. All rights reserved.
I’m Growing Up But Am I Normal?
Since your last birthday, a lot of things have changed. For one, you’re much smarter than you were last year. That’s obvious. But there might have been some other changes — ones that you weren’t ready for. Perhaps you’ve grown several inches above everyone else in class. Or maybe they all did the growing and, you feel too short. Maybe you haven’t gained a pound and, you feel like a feather on the seesaw, or maybe you can’t fit into your favorite pair of jeans. And now you’re looking in the mirror, thinking only one thing: Am I normal?
Everybody’s Different First of all, what’s normal? There’s no one type of normal. Otherwise, the world would be full of a lot of abnormal people! The next time you go to the mall, take a look around. You’ll see tall people, short people, and people with broad shoulders, little feet, big stomachs, long fingers, stubby legs, and skinny arms ... you get the idea. You can change your hairstyle or put on a new hat, but the way you look isn’t entirely under your control. Your looks were mostly determined by your parents. When your parents created you, they passed on their genes — a kind of special code — and those genes helped to decide your size and shape, your eye color and hair texture, even whether you have freckles.
Small or Tall Height is just one of the thousands of features your genes decide. In fact, because you have two parents, your genes act like a referee, giving you a height that usually lands somewhere between the height of each parent. If both of your parents are tall, then most likely you will be tall, too, but if you have questions about how tall you’re going to be, ask your doctor if he or she can help you figure it out. But genes don’t decide everything. For example, eating an unhealthy diet can keep you from growing to your full potential. Getting plenty of sleep, enough exercise, and nutrients will help you grow just like you should.
What’s NORMAL?
If you’re wondering how fast you should grow. It depends. There’s no perfect or right amount. On average, kids grow about 2 inches a year between age 3 and when they start puberty (when your body starts changing and becoming more grown up). Your doctor will know how your growth has been going over the years. Two inches here and there are not nearly as important as the height you’re at now, how you’ve been growing up to this point, and what other changes your body may be going through.
Growth Spurts Don’t be scared if you seem to have grown a lot in a very short time. Everyone has a growth spurt during puberty. The average age for starting puberty is about 10 for girls and about 11 for boys. But it can be earlier or later — between 7 and 13 for girls and 9 and 15 for boys. You’ll usually begin to notice that you’re growing faster about a year or so after your body starts to show the first changes of puberty.
Weighing In Weight can vary a lot, too, from kid to kid. It’s tempting to compare yourself with your friends. But kids often weigh more or less than their friends and are still normal. TV and magazines might make us think our bodies should weigh and look a certain way, but in real life, there are a lot of differences. Some kids worry so much about their weight that they try unhealthy and dangerous things to change it. The best way to have a healthy weight is to eat right and get a lot of playtime (exercise).
What to Do if You’re Worried If you have concerns about your weight — or how your body is changing — talk it over with a parent or your doctor. The doctor can tell you if anything is wrong. But most likely, your one-of-a-kind body is growing just like it’s supposed to.
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COMMON SENSES
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CATCH THE PENNY WHAT THIS EXPERIMENT SHOWS
HOW TWO EYES HELP YOU JUDGE WHERE OBJECTS ARE WHAT TO DO 1. Put a cup in front of your partner. It should be about
2 feet away from him or her.
2. Ask your partner to close one eye. 3. Hold one of the pennies in the air about 18 inches above the table. Move it around slowly. 4.
Tell your partner that you’ll drop the penny whenever he or she says, “Drop it!” The idea is for your partner — with one eye closed — to judge when the penny is over the cup so the penny will drop into the cup.
5. Give your partner five tries with one eye closed, then five tries with both eyes open. Which way worked best?
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TASTY TOTS What you need: 1-1/2 Pounds
Sweet Potatoes
3/4 Cup
Chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans), undrained
2TBSP
Vegetable Oil
•
190 Calories
•
4g Protein
•
5g Fat
•
0.5g Sat. Fat
•
33g Carbohydrate
•
5g Fiber
•
0mg Cholesterol
•
210mg Sodium
Equipment and supplies:
•
12g Sugars
•
Serves: 6
1/2 tsp Salt 1/4 tsp Pepper 1/2 tsp
Onion Powder
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
Cooking spray
Measuring Cups/Spoons
• Knife •
Food Processor
•
Large Bowl
•
Sheet Pans
• Oven/Stove
What to do: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F. 2. Steam or boil sweet potatoes until barely tender, approximately 15 minutes. Let cool. 3. Peel cooled potatoes. Shred them using a grater or food processor. 4. Puree chickpeas, including liquid, until smooth. 5. Combine shredded sweet potatoes and chickpeas in a large bowl. 6. Add oil, salt, pepper, onion powder, and cinnamon. Mix well. 7.
Spray sheet pans with cooking spray.
8. Scoop heaping tablespoons of the mixture and place 1 inch apart on prepared sheet pans. 9. Bake in oven for approximately 10-12 minutes, until starting to brown.
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Nutritional analysis (per serving):
Serving Size: 1/6 recipe
NOTE Get a grownup’s help with this recipe, which requires using the oven/stove and chopping with a knife.
HAPPY HEART
YOUR HEART && CIRCULATORY CIRCULATORYSYSTEM SYSTEM
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HAPPY HEART We see and hear about hearts everywhere. A long time ago, people even thought that their emotions came from their hearts, maybe because the heart beats faster when a person is scared or excited. Now we know that emotions come from the brain, and in this case, the brain tells the heart to speed up. So what’s the heart up to, then? How does it keep busy? What does it look like? LET’S FIND OUT.
The Heart Is a Muscle
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. There are lots of muscles all over your body — in your arms, in your legs, in your back, even in your behind. But the heart muscle is special because of what it does. The heart sends blood around your body. The blood provides your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs. It also carries away waste. Your heart is sort of like a pump, or two pumps in one. 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. How the Heart Beats How does the heart beat? Before each beat, your heart fills with blood. Then its muscle contracts to squirt 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 squirt out the blood. Your heart does this all day and all night, all the time. The heart is one hard worker!
Parts of the Heart
The heart is made up of four different bloodfilled 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-
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tree-uh). If you’re talking only about one, call it an atrium. The atria are the chambers that fill with the blood returning to the heart from the body and lungs. 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. Their job is to squirt out the blood to the body and lungs. 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? Well, 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-KUSpid) 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.
How Blood Circulates
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 ones that carry blood back to the heart are called veins. The movement of the 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. The left side of your heart sends that oxygenrich 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!
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.
Pretty Cool — It’s 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?
Keep Your Heart Happy
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 avoidb 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.
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. Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD Date reviewed: October 2014 Nemours Note: All information on KidsHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor. © 1995-2020 The Nemours Foundation. All rights reserved.
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_______________________ _______________________ Boomerang Back Page
Create a new beginning and ending for this comic strip. Give your
________________________________________ ______________________________________
Date Date _______________________ _______________________
BEGIN AND and END COMIC COMIC.
his s comic comicstrip. strip.Give Giveyour yournew newcomic comicstrip stripa atitle. title. Create a new beginning and ending for this comic strip. Give your new comic strip a title.
On The Rocks
by byTyler TylerMartin Martin
HOWTHE BODYWORKS
MAKE YOUR FRIENDS J PARENTS LAUGH 1. What do you call a dinosaur that is sleeping? 2. What is fast, loud and crunchy? 3. Why did the teddy bear say no to dessert? 4. What has ears but cannot hear? 5. What did the left eye say to the right eye? 1. A dino-snore! 2. A rocket chip! 3. Because she was stuffed. 4. A cornfield. 5. Between us, something smells!
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CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM See how many words you can find from the list below.
A N X R M V W J A H F C V S B
L T A S C W T B R E B I X L V
E M R N Q W A N T A U R Z P U
T C W I Y V E N T R I C L E S
Arteries Atrium Beat Blood
I J I E U O T E P T S U G P S
T F O V U M S G K S W L V A E
F Z V N W X A Y M R S A X S A
L D A G W H W X S T B T E H D
O A S J H W E O N L G I G V H
Circulation Heart Nutrients Oxygen
W F P L C C A E W S R O Y S X
Y I H N Y D I D F E B N Q G T
M L L H P R O F T V H E D C H
S N A F T O B R N L L R A O Y
Y T R U L J A Z I A Q M Y T R
Valves Veins Ventricles Waste
©1995-The Nemours Foundation/KidsHealth®. Reprinted with permission.
E W N B C N Y G W V R C W O E
