Health Class and the Digestive System

I am teaching, as I'm sure I've mentioned a time or two, Health this year at our co-op. While I found the subject merely tolerable in Jr. High, I find it fascinating now. It is truly amazing how our bodies work and even though I'm just scratching the surface of it's workings, we are all simply amazed. This past Monday, we finished up our unit on the digestive system. This unit was particularly hilarious to my young scholars as we covered the grossness that goes along with it. There was much ew-ing and much giggling as we covered our body's charming way of handling our food. I know how much the kids love a good hands-on kind of project, so I incorporated something my sister-in-law sent me eons ago (but we have just now gotten to using it)...the way our stomach works!

But, first things first. I had to take a photo of Grace reading one of the steps of the digestive system. This was special to me, because while I have taught her basic phonics this past year or so, somewhere along the way, she learned to read. Really read. And she read this:

"The food passes into the small intestine and mixes with more digestive fluids from the [liver, pancreas and gall bladder] which breaks the food up into tiny pieces called molecules. The food molecules now pass into the blood."

Now, I will admit to helping her sound out "digestive" and "breaks". But she got molecules on her own. Who, exactly, taught her "molecules"? (Ahem...Amy. That's probably you.)

So, now we're moving on to the actual project.

First, we 'eat' a cracker. (That bag represents our mouth.)

Chew, chew, chew!

Then, we swallow our food and it goes down the esophagus and into our stomach which houses acid. In this case, that's our crackers in lemon juice. And Grace behind it. She just wants me to stop taking pictures and let her be the stomach and squish the food.

Okay, stomach....squeeze, mash and stir your cracker!

So, basically, as you mash your cracker, you are simulating the stomach and what it does with your food. The end result, in reality, is a gooey mass that then begins it's journey through your small intestine. I have no picture of the end result. It really was just too gross. It looked just like vomit (understandably). I see enough of that without looking at synthetic stuff. And so, I have spared your eyes. You can thank me later.