Did you know that 2/3rds of your body is made up of water? Water is really important to help keep your body healthy. If you don’t drink enough, your body becomes dehydrated. Water helps your bodies transport nutrients, digest food, transport blood, and remove waste.
During recess, water in your body also helps keep your body cool. It does this in two ways. First, your body uses water to produce sweat on your skin. When the sun evaporates the sweat, some excess heat is taken too. Second, your body moves blood to right below the surface of your skin so it can cool off. Your blood is mostly made of water. This is why kids sometimes turn red when they’re playing really hard!
It is really important that you drink water during the day. This way, your body can stay cooler during play. Make sure you also take a drink after recess so you can replace any water that was lost from sweating.
Once you are back in class, water helps your brain work. If you don’t drink enough, you might have a hard time focusing on class work. Some kids have a condition where they can’t sweat. This is actually dangerous because their bodies can overheat when they are playing hard. They need to be very careful to stay cool other ways.
If you don’t drink enough water, you might not feel very well. Some kids even get heat stroke, heat cramps, and heat fatigue, which can be very dangerous. That is why you should be sure to drink plenty of water every day.
Here are some more cool water facts:
- More than 1/2 of your body weight is from water.
- Your muscles are made of 75% water.
- Your bones are made of 32% water.
- Your blood is made of 93% water.
Activity: Make a poster of you and your friends taking a water break during recess. On your poster, write three cool things that you learned about water.
