Year 4 - 2021/2022

Year 4 have been investigating the digestive system. We used bananas, biscuits and water as food. We cut and ground up the food with forks and potato mashers. These did the job of the teeth. We tried to use the spoons as tongues to push the food to the oesophagus but this did not work! We had forgotten to add the water which acted as saliva and further broke down the food. Then it travelled down the plastic tube that we used as the oesophagus. We had to keep pressing on the tube to mimic the action of the muscles in the oesophagus. Then the food went into a sandwich bag which we used as the stomach. We added lemon juice to act as the stomach acid that broke the food down even more and we shook the stomach. By now, the food was quite liquified. Then we transferred the food to the small intestine for which we used tights. The nutrients were squeezed out and caught in a tray and the remaining ‘waste’ was moved to a paper cup (the rectum) and then squeezed out through a hole in another paper cup. This was the anus and the end of the digestive system. We had fun until we had to clean up at the end of the lesson!

 

See photos below.