This afternoon, Year 4 investigated how our digestive system works using crackers, orange juice and a pair of tights!
First, they took some crackers and crunched them up in a plastic bag to represent chewing in the mouth. We added a little bit of water for saliva to start the digestion process.
Next, we discussed where our food goes after we swallow it and learnt how the oesophagus directs our food to our stomach. Here, we added orange juice to represent our stomach acid which breaks down our food. We mashed the food up, the way our stomach churns our food.
Then, we discussed the movement of our food into our intestines. Here, the nutrients and vitamins from our food are absorbed by our small intestine, and water is absorbed by the large intestine. We represented the intestines with tights and had to squeeze out all of the nutrients and liquid so we were just left with the waste.
We then had the final stage of the digestive system, excretion. This is where our bodies get rid of the waste. We used our spare trays to represent a toilet and well, we’ll let you figure out the rest!