Kids might know that salt is a crystal and that chips, french fries and certain foods taste better because of it, but why humans need salt might be a mystery to them. A child's natural curiosity and open-mindedness makes teaching something like the effects of salt on the human body relatively easy. A few hands-on activities sprinkled in with a lesson or conversation about salt heightens interest and enthusiasm while kids learn.
Historical Importance of Salt
Prehistoric people were hunters who ate large quantities of red meat, says the Salt Association website, and derived their daily salt intake by eating animals that regularly visited naturally occurring salt licks. This pre-salted meat supplied man's needs until he started to settle down, establish farms, grow crops and raise livestock. Harvesting salt from lakes or the sea became necessary to keep both him and his livestock healthy. He also learned to use it to preserve food. Illustrate to kids the history of salt with a timeline that stretches from prehistoric to modern man. Encourage kids to draw or color pictures of people in history and their quest for salt. Salt history word searches, crossword puzzles and matching sheets enhance the lesson.
The Body's Need for Salt
The Royal Society of Chemistry website states the sodium ions in salt perform a variety of essential functions in the body. The chloride in salt helps the body absorb potassium, plays an important role in the digestive process and assists blood in carrying carbon dioxide waste from cells to the lungs for elimination. Since the body cannot make salt, some salt has to be consumed on a daily basis to ensure healthy fluid levels in red blood cells and to transmit impulses and electrical signals to the brain, muscles and nerves. For younger kids, introduce salt's complex role in the human body by using biology-based coloring pages, simple illustrations of basic human physiology or visit online interactive websites such as CELLS alive! and the Children, Youth and Women's Health Service for general body basics.
Effects of Not Enough Salt
Salt helps keep fluids within the human body balanced. The International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders website states, "Chronic salt deprivation produces loss of weight and appetite, inertia, nausea and muscular cramps. Excessive heat as in desert summers depletes body salt, leading to possible vascular collapse and death." Explain to kids that salt exits the body via sweat; without enough salt a person can experience unpleasant sensations, such as muscle weakness or cramps, or just a general woozy feeling. Bouts of diarrhea also can rapidly eliminate a person's salt reserves. Ask kids questions about how they might have felt after playing too long outside in the heat. Discuss the need to replenish salt and restore electrolyte balance within the body after playing or working hard by drinking sports drinks, eating salty snacks or resting to reduce additional loss of salt.
Salty Tears and Sweat
One obvious way to illustrate to kids about salt in the human body is to ask them if they've ever tasted tears or droplets of sweat. If kids recognize that salt is excreted through body fluids, they can start to grasp that whatever salt is lost must be replenished through foods, drinks or salt tablets. Because salt is easily accessible in most parts of the world, it is often enhanced with iodine and other trace minerals and used as a delivery system for these important components.
Harvesting and Mining Salt
Man's crucial need for salt has led him to harvest it from the sea, salty lakes and underground salt deposits. Methods include making brine or a saline solution and evaporation of salty water to extract crystals. The Learn NC website suggests having kids closely examine a few crystals of Kosher, sea or table salt on a black background using a magnifying glass or a microscope, and taking online virtual tours of salt mines and fields.
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