School โบ Digestion โบ Ages 6โ7
Where does my food go?
The journey of food through your body: chewing, swallowing, the squishy stomach and the long, long intestines. With a stomach-in-a-bag experiment.
Read
When you eat, food goes on a long journey through a tube in your body: the mouth, the food pipe, the stomach, the small intestine and the large intestine.[1]
It starts in your mouth. Your teeth chew food into small pieces. Your spit makes it wet and starts to break down the starch in foods like bread.[1][2]
When you swallow, muscles squeeze the food down the food pipe into your stomach.[1][2]
Your stomach makes strong acid and juices that break food down. A thick slimy layer protects the stomach itself.[1][2]
In the small intestine, the goodness from your food passes into your blood, which carries it around your body.[1]
The large intestine soaks up water. Tiny helpers called bacteria live there. What is left over becomes poo.[1]
Try it: Stomach in a bag
You need
- A strong zip-lock bag per group
- A few plain crackers or rice cakes (check for allergies)
- A small cup of water
- An old pair of clean tights or a stocking
- A bowl or tray
- Paper towels
Safety
Do not eat the crackers. Check for food allergies first (use rice cakes if wheat is a problem). An adult does any cutting. Wash hands afterwards and wipe up spills.
What to do
- Break the crackers into the bag. This is like your teeth chewing.
- Pour in the water (your spit and stomach juices). Close the bag tightly.
- Squish the bag with your hands for one minute. This is your stomach mixing the food. What does it look like now?
- Over the bowl, an adult cuts a small corner off the bag and the mush is squeezed into the tights leg. Squeeze it along slowly, like muscles squeezing food through the intestines.
- Look and feel: what comes through the tights? What is left inside? Wash your hands.
What happens, and why?
Chewing and squishing break food into smaller and smaller pieces, and the liquid mixes it into a mush. In your body, muscles squeeze the food along, the small intestine takes the goodness into the blood and the large intestine soaks up water. The tights are only a model: real intestines do much more than squeeze.[1][2]
Play: Where does it happen?
Read each card. Does it happen in the mouth, in the stomach or in the intestines? Pick the right box.
Your best score is kept only on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Quiz
Other ages: Ages 10โ11 ยท Ages 15โ16