The Digestive Track ~ Week 1

  We are loving using Jeanne Fulbright’s Exploring Creations with Human Anatomy and Physiology

This was our first week learning about digestion and what happens to the food we put in our bodies…
   Working on labeling the alimentary tract…
   Libby’s journal
   Tommy’s journal


We spent quite a bit of time talking about out teeth and how to care for them.
        A cool board game that we played about taking care of your teeth.


The next step was discussing saliva and we did a neat cracker and cheese experiment that was in our books and learned how amylase breaks down carbohydrates. The kids had fun using a mirror and finding their glands and touching their hard and soft palates.
Then we were on to the tongue, where we discussed briefly the job of taste buds and where they were found ~ we’ll be going more in depth with those later.
We also spent some time talking about teeth in other animals and the similarities or differences in their diets compared to ours and their need for different teeth.

We have used a few different books as go-alongs like:
“George Washington’s Teeth”  
and here’s a great pic of what one set of his false teeth actually looked like ~ I can’t imagine how uncomfortable they must have been with the spring loaded action. OUCH!! 













“Teeth and Tusks”  (from the “Look At” series)  

and “Take Care of Your Teeth”   

And made a neat digestion poster using printables from this book.       
Some links that I used this week were:
SurfNet Kids
Kids Health
Inner Body
Enchanted Learning  where I found some great printables to use this week.

And as a finisher to our beginning of digestion we watched a couple of videos
An episode of “Sid the Science Kid” ~ Feeling Good Inside and Out

and these great videos on YouTube:

and this one

Check back in to see where else digestion takes us as we explore where our food goes…
Happy Learning!!