Green Oaks
Teaching Plan

Week 4

Digestion

Purpose

The digestive system is divided into 2 components: (1) break down (mouth and stomach) and (2) absorption (small and large intestines). Students will all get a copy of a picture of the mouth, stomach, and intestines. Refer to the handout whenever possible and help the kids label it.

Big Ideas

(1)

It’s all one tube.

(2)

You need this tube to bring nutrition into your body.

Vocabulary

Station 1: nutrition, protein, sugar and starch, fat.

Station 2: digestion, stomach, small intestines, absorption, large intestines

Station 3: dental hygiene, flossing

Materials Needed

Station 1: food chart (pyramid), cookbook or magazine for photographs of food

Station 2: diagram of an animal with all of the essential parts of the digestive tract, labeled (see below), 20 foot piece of string to represent the length of the small intestines. See "Activity: The Digestion Train" for additional materials.

Station 3: tooth brushes (at least one hard and one soft brush; if possible one toothbrush for each student that they may bring home), dental floss, model teeth (if not possible, use your own!)

General: Words of the Day and Poster

Station One

IT’S ALL ABOUT NUTRITION

This station is a great way to learn the basics about nutrition. Students also enjoy thinking about foods that they eat everyday and dividing food into nutritional categories. This is a great exercise for learning to think critically about parts of a whole (the components of each food item). It's also a great way to practice handwriting and spelling.

VOCABULARY: nutrition, protein, sugar and starch (instead of carbohydrate), fat

(1)

Nutrition:

Activity:

  1. Talk about favorite foods and have kids draw them. If they need help with handwriting or spelling, have them write the name of each food item next to each picture.

  2. Describe food categories using "protein, sugar and starch, fat" as a guide. Use the idea of a food pyramid if you want. Have pictures of food that represent these categories. After each category, ask what that category does for our bodies. Sugar and starch: How do you feel after eating sugar? Starch? Fat: When would we want to store energy for later? When we’re sleeping, we don’t want to have wake up to eat, so our bodies use the energy stored in fats. Protein: Proteins help you grow. Which people need to eat a lot of proteins? Kids! After each category, ask what other foods in that group the kids can think of.

  3. Show how the kids’ favorite foods fit into many different categories. When you have a meal, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, usually you have some food from each group. That’s because the three food groups help your body in different ways.

Station Two

THE FOOD TRAIN

In this station, students will learn the major parts of the digestive tract and what happens to the food in each part. The concepts are centered around body parts having "jobs" (example: one of the jobs of the stomach is to mix the food).

VOCABULARY: digestion, stomach, small intestines, absorption, large intestines

(1)

Digestion: The digestive system is like a train making a destination. We load food onto the train by putting it in our mouths, and then the train makes a journey with many stops along the way. At each stop, something happens to the food to make it more possible for our bodies to eat the nutrients and vitamins from the food.

We are going to think of this train having 4 stops, because there are 4 major parts to the digestive system. The four parts include: the mouth, the stomach, the small intestines, and the large intestines.

Activity: Poster of the Food Train

  1. Use the food train poster to describe the following. Be sure that the "job" of each part of the food train is written next to the appropriate part of the body. These are: mouth (break-down), stomach (break-down, mixing, storage), small intestines (absorption), and large intestines (storage of waste).

  2. The train starts in the mouth, moves through a tunnel to the stomach, moves to the small intestines, and then into the large intestines. At that point, there is only the left over garbage of the food we ate, which goes into the toilet. However, along the way, each of the four parts did a special job so that the nutrients and vitamins out of our food could enter the blood. Remember that the blood is the servant that delivers the nutrients and vitamins to our organs and body parts. These nutrients and vitamins, which are hidden in foods, are necessary for our organs and our bodies to stay healthy.

(2)

Mouth:

The job of the mouth is to break down the food into smaller particles. Think of an apple. Before we swallow an apple, we make sure that we chew thoroughly so that we do not choke. The less we chew the longer it will take for our bodies to get the nutrients out of the apple and into our blood.

(3)

Stomach:

The job of the stomach is to mix the food with acid, to the break the food into even smaller pieces, and to store the food until the small intestines are ready to receive it.

(4)

Small Intestines:

The small intestines have the job of taking up all of the good stuff from the food (like vitamins and nutrients) into the blood stream. We call this absorption. It also absorbs water too! This part of the food train tracks are very very long. Over 20 feet long! That means as long as four or five of you standing head to foot!

Question:

  1. Why is the small intestine so long? It is the most important organ for nutrient and vitamin absorption, so the longer it is, the better job it does at taking all of the goodies from the food into the blood stream. That way our bodies can get the most out of the foods we eat.

  2. How does 20 feet of intestines fit into our bodies? It is coiled up like a bunch of cooked spaghetti and fits in the abdomen.

(5)

Large Intestines:

The Large intestines can also absorb water, but this part of the digestion train is really important for storing the wasted parts of the food. From here…into the toilet!

(6)

The Digestion Train (bringing it all together):

Activity:

  1. This activity gives the kids a chance to see what each part of the digestive tract does. Break the kids into 4 groups, each group representing the mouth, the stomach, the small intestines, and the large intestines.

  2. Station 1: How do we eat an apple? First the mouth and teeth and tongue chop the apple into small pieces. The kid here will add the apple to the container, and use kitchen tools to break the apple into smaller pieces (just like the teeth).

  3. Station 2: After we swallow, the train moves to the stomach. The stomach is an acid bath where food is stored and germs are killed. One kid "pours" an empty pitcher labeled "acid" over the food, while another kid stirs the broth. This "acid" is actually apple juice.

  4. Station 3: Next the food train goes to the intestines. The intestines unload the food into your body so we can use it as nutrition. Have the kids at this station drink the apple juice from container. This is how the small intestines absorb the nutrients and vitamins from the food.

  5. Station 4: What ever is left, gets stored in the large intestines until we go to the bathroom. Have the kids in this group throw away the leftover contents of the container. (Treat poop jokes matter-of-factly and hope that the kids will follow your lead.)

 

Station Three

DENTAL HYGIENE

The teeth in our mouth are a valuable part of our bodies. They help us eat by helping us bite into foods and chewing the foods down to a small enough size for swallowing. They also help us speak and make funny sounds like whistling. It is important that everyone cleans their teeth at least 2 times a day, so that they do not get infected and fall out. We are going to learn about 2 ways to keep our teeth clean: brushing and flossing.

VOCABULARY: dental hygiene, flossing

(1)

Brushing:

Question:

What are teeth good for? This question can be used as the starting point of this station. Once the students understand how important teeth are for eating and talking, it will be clearer why dental hygiene is important.

Activity: Brushing

Ask students to show you how they brush their teeth. If there are not enough toothbrushes for everyone, have students pretend with their fingers or provide them with straws with which to pretend. It is important to stress that everyone has a different style of brushing, and that all styles are great if they include the following:

  1. Brushing the insides and outsides of both the top teeth and bottom teeth: My dentist taught me to brush from the gums down in small back-n-forth movements, moving from the back of the mouth to the front of the mouth
  2. Bushing as far back as you can to reach the teeth in the back: This is where people often get cavities — in those hard to reach places.
  3. Brushing the gums: Brush above the teeth and below the teeth where you see the pink areas. If we do not keep our gums clean, these too can get sick and weak, thereby losing their ability to hold the teeth in place.
  4. Brushing the tongue: Although many people do not practice tongue brushing, gentle scrubs on the tongue can remove microscopic pieces of food, bacteria, and help maintain good breath!

Question:

Are all toothbrushes the same? See what the students say. The major point here is that some toothbrushes are hard some are soft, and some fall in-between. Let the students know that harder is not better for clean teeth, but rather, softer brushes work better at getting out small lodged pieces of food that may be stuck between teeth. Also, harder brushes may be too coarse and lead to bleeding and sore gums. Be sure to have a hard and soft toothbrush for the students to feel and compare.

(2)

Flossing:

Question:

Is there another way to help keep our teeth clean? This question can be used to help the students think about flossing, eating healthily (more apples, less candy and soda).

Activity: Flossin’ Fun

In our experience, many students had not heard of flossing and if they did, they did not know how to correctly floss. This activity will be a demonstration of flossing technique, followed by the opportunity for all of the students to floss their teeth. Use what you know from your own dentist, and have flossin’ fun!

Other Ideas

(1)

Iodine starch experiment with potatoes and cauliflower. Fat test rubbing on paper. Some protein experiment. Have students test the fat, starch, and protein content of different food types. This is a great station for talking about "science" and why we do experiments-- to prove that things are so.

 

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