The Digestive System

During the autumn term we are learning all about the human digestive system and the journey our food makes through it. As part of this, we made a model of the digestive system to simulate what happens when we eat. We started by putting some crackers, banana and water into a zip-lock plastic bag and smashed it all together. This simulated the teeth chewing, cutting and grinding the food, with the water being our saliva. After that, the food was 'swallowed' and travelled down the oesophagus into the stomach. To represent our stomach acid, vinegar was added to the zip-lock bag. The contents of the stomach were mixed together and everyone was struck by how much it really did resemble vomit! This was a useful learning point as we talked about how when we are sick, we bring up undigested food from the stomach - just like what we have in the bags! Next, we cut a hole in the corner of the bag and poured the contents into one leg of a pair of tights. The tights represented both the small and large intestine. First, we squeezed the contents of the tights to remove as much liquid as possible; this was the body absorbing the nutrients - and later water in the large intestine - from the food. When as much liquid has been removed as possible, the stool was formed. This was then removed from the large intestine and stored in the rectum. To do this, the foot from the tights was cut off and the contents of the intestines pushed out into a paper cup. A hole, to simulate the anus, was cut into the bottom of the paper cup and the 'stool' pushed out through it. All in all, we learned a lot and had a lot of fun! We also made a huge mess...