--- title: Growing up: growth spurts, height, voices and getting stronger — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Growing up: growth spurts, height, voices and getting stronger», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Growing up is not one smooth climb: you grow slowly and steadily for years, then shoot up fast as a teenage --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Growing up: growth spurts, height, voi… # Growing up: growth spurts, height, voices and getting stronger Lesson 361 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/0/) — Growing up is not one smooth climb: you grow slowly and steadily for years, then shoot up fast as a teenager, and then you stop for good. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/1/) — Picture the pencil marks on a kitchen door frame, one for every birthday: for years they creep up a hand's width apart, then suddenly one year the gap is twice as big. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/2/) — Bones get longer at growth plates, soft bands near their ends; growth hormone, made mostly in deep sleep, tells them to grow, and food gives them the bricks. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/3/) — Other things grow too: the voice box gets bigger and the voice drops, muscles get stronger, and the brain keeps rewiring itself until you are about 25. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/4/) — Between about 4 years old and the teenage years most children grow about 5 to 6 centimetres a year, and growth hormone is let out mostly during deep sleep at night. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/5/) — You are about a centimetre taller in the morning than at bedtime, because the soft discs between the bones of your back squash a little during the day. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/6/) — Growth plates are bands of soft cartilage near the ends of bones where new bone is added; they show as gaps on an X-ray because cartilage lets X-rays through, and they close into solid bone when the teenage years end. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/7/) — There are 27 bones in one hand and wrist, and doctors can guess a child's age from how the hand bones look on an X-ray. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/8/) — In the teenage growth spurt children can grow about 8 to 10 centimetres in a year; feet and hands grow first, then legs, then the body, and shoe size often stops changing a year or two before height. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/9/) — Height comes mostly from hundreds of genes from both parents, plus food, sleep and health; a body that is often hungry or ill grows less, which doctors call stunting. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/10/) — People in the Netherlands grew about 20 centimetres taller on average over about 150 years, mostly thanks to better food and health. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/11/) — For most people the arm span from fingertip to fingertip is about the same as their height, and Leonardo da Vinci drew a famous man in a circle and a square to show such proportions. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/12/) — A baby's head is about a quarter of its length, but a grown-up's head is only about an eighth of their height. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/13/) — In the teenage years the voice box grows and the vocal folds get longer and thicker, so the voice gets deeper and cracks while the brain learns to control them; the Adam's apple is the front of the voice box, and girls' voices drop a little too. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/14/) — Muscles get stronger mostly as each fibre gets thicker, but young children get stronger mainly because the brain learns to switch on more fibres at once. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/15/) — Many children aged about 3 to 12 get aching legs in the evening called growing pains; doctors are not sure growing bones cause them, and a limp, swelling, fever or pain in one spot means seeing a doctor. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/16/) — Bones need calcium, protein and vitamin D, which your skin makes in daylight; extra food cannot make you taller than your genes allow, it only makes you wider. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/361-growing-up-growth-spurts-height-voices-and-getting-stronger/17/) — The brain keeps rewiring until about 25, and the front part that plans and stops you doing silly things finishes last, which scientists think may be one reason teenagers take more risks. - ← previous: [Muscles and joints by name: biceps, triceps, knees, elbows and the busiest muscles](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/360-muscles-and-joints-by-name-biceps-triceps-knees-elbows-and-the-busiest-muscles/) - next →: [Eyes and ears deeper: glasses, colour blindness, tears, earwax and dizziness](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/362-eyes-and-ears-deeper-glasses-colour-blindness-tears-earwax-and-dizziness/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)