This week P3,4,5 have been widening their knowledge of the biological systems. This week we have been looking at DIGESTION.

We learned all about how food is digested and all the names of the digestive system, labelling them on a diagram.

Mrs Devlin then asked us the question ‘So, what is poo?’

We helped her to model the process of digestion using real food and items to represent the digestive system. We even had green ‘bile’ from the liver, red ‘pancreatic juices’ from the pancreas and yellow ‘stomach acid’ from the stomach! Everything that Mrs Devlin showed us was funny, exciting and disgusting at the same time. We just couldn’t believe it when we were left with the end waste product…poo! Mrs Devlin was left with red hands from all the food colouring!

First we broke up the food with a set of HUGE teeth and passed it down the oesophagus, squeezing it to show how the muscles work.

Then we rotated the ‘stomach’ to show the churning motion…

We then used the leg of a pair of tights to represent the intestines. The stomach, once full emptied the partly digested food into the small intestine so that the goodness (nutrients) can be released.

This is the nutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) being released through the walls of the small intestine into our bloodstream.

The undigested food then passes into the large intestine, where water is reabsorbed into the body. The waste product that is left then leaves the large intestine as…

POO!