Last week, in our Science lesson, we set up an experiment to investigate the effect of different liquids on our teeth. We realised that egg shells are a little bit like the enamel coating of our teeth, so we placed hard-boiled eggs in different liquids and observed what happened. We made sure that we put the same amount of liquid in each jar, to make sure that the test was fair. We made predictions about what we thought would happen to the egg shells. This is what the eggs looked like after one week.
This week, we have been learning about what happens to the food we eat. We had lots of fun exploring the digestive system in a practical way. We cut up banana and crackers and place them in a bowl. We mashed up the food in a bowl, just like biting and chewing up the food that we eat. We added a little water to the food, to show the saliva from our mouths, mixing with the food.
Next, the mashed up food was poured through a cardboard tube, representing the oesophagus and into a plastic bag, which represented the stomach. We talked about acid in the stomach breaking down the food. We added orange juice to the bag, as this is acidic and we squeezed the bag, to show what happens to food in our stomachs.
We learnt that food enters the small intestine and then the large intestine, after it leaves the stomach. We used a pair of tights to represent the intestine. We squeezed the tights, and observed that liquid was removed from the food mixture. The nutrients from the food would be absorbed by the body, during this stage.
Finally, we learnt about how the food enters the rectum, and passes out of the body as a stool.
We used two cups to represent this part of the process.
