This year I am teaching a class in a Co-Op about the Human Body. I thought it would neat for the kids to see how the digestive system worked from beginning to end. Therefore, we built it! It was quite disgusting and I nearly "tossed my cookies" pouring the liquid out of our "stomach" but here is what we did...
1.) We started with a peanut butter sandwich. We talked about how our teeth bite it into smaller pieces. Josh tore it into bite-size pieces and placed it into our make-shift mouth - a large ziploc bag.
2.) We added our saliva (water) and then we "chewed" it up. The kids pounded the bag of sandwich with a hammer. 
3.) After our sandwich turned into a thick mush, we dropped it down the esophagus (a paper towel tube) and into our stomach (our mega-power Vitamix blender.) The stomach was filled with acid to help break down the sandwich before it entered the intestines. The acid was mixed with vinegar and baking soda and was waiting in our blender before the stomach mush arrived!
4.) The stomach started churning - peanut butter, bread, saliva water, vinegar, and baking soda swirling around. If you look at the kids' faces you can tell that this part was disgusting - and it smelled horrible!
5.) We looked at the bile mixture in our stomach and prepared to feed it through the intestines. Franklin is getting his gloves on because he will be our "sphincter muscle."
6.) We started feeding the mixture from our stomach into the intestines. The intestines were made of panty-hose and the "gloved" participants squeezed out the nutrients. Yes, they had to squeeze the outside of the pantyhose while the sphincter muscle continued to hold it in until it was time to "drop it in the potty."
1 comment:
I so didn't need to know that. Seriously. TMI, Mrs. Beebe, LOL.
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