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Breaking It Down Learning how the body breaks down and digests food. Kat Hohenberger Overview: Students will learn about the digestive system. They will look at how the body breaks down food and uses it as energy. Background: The digestive system is important for children to learn about because it is a part of their bodies. Children should know how the body works and it can give them a better sense of who they are and how they work. Knowing these things will set the foundation for more in depth teachings about the digestive system in the future. It can also spark curiosity in the child, and they may find they really enjoy this subject. To entice them I will be performing the Digestion in a Bag activity. To perform my experiment each child will need, zip-lock bags, two to three crackers and a small amount of soda. The children would proceed to put the crackers in the bag. Once they are in the bag and the bag is zipped, the children would crush the crackers. This represents the breaking down of food in the body. Once the crackers are squished, you can pour the small amount of soda into the bag. After a few minutes with soda in the bad the kids can feel the cracker and soda and mix it around. The soda represents the acid in the stomach, and shows that it breaks the food down even further. (Hickland) My concepts for this presentation are: Where food goes after you eat it, breaking down food, and turning food into nutrients. Through these objectives I should cover how the digestive system works, in a way that a teacher knows how to plan a lesson off of it, but also in a way kids will be able to learn. By the end of this essay I hope I gain more knowledge on this subject, and hope that someone who doesn’t know much about the digestive system will walk away ready to teach a class about it. Some things the kids may not think about is where their food goes after they eat it. First, the food enters the body, you chew it in to small pieces so that it is small enough to make its way down the esophagus, in to the stomach. The stomach produces chemicals that help break the food down even further, which I will go in to further detail about later. Once it has went through the stomach it goes through a tube called the small intestine. The small intestine is approximately about twenty feet long (WebMD). While the food is in the small intestine it continues to break down the food, in to liquid. That liquid is then absorbed in to the small intestine walls, into the blood stream, and the blood stream carries the liquid all throughout the body to feed your cells (Hill). After this whole process the undigested food left over is then discarded as waste. Going back to the breaking down of food, this is what I will be focusing on next. Kids are told that once food enters the stomach it is broken down, but is never really explained how this process happens. First off, the first stage of the breaking down of food happens when the food is chewed up using teeth. After the food is swallowed the food that was chewed enters the stomach for the second stage of breaking down of food. In the stomach you will find stomach acid, also known as gastric juice (McGuigan). Brendan McGuigan accurately describes how this acid helps break down food. “This acid helps break down food by dissolving some of the bonds in protein molecules, then activates enzymes that further separate these compounds, allowing them to be used by the body” (McGuigan). Carbohydrates, fats and nutrients are not broken down in the stomach, but in the intestines. Which is the next stage, the small intestines absorb more nutrients and water then they break down the food, but when you get to the large intestines this is where the rest of the fluid is Age/Grade level: 3rd -4th grade Skills: Observing, inferring, experimenting, understanding cause and effect relationships, formulating models. Objectives: At the completion of this activity, students will be able to make observations, communicate results, and experiment by replicating the process of the digestive system using crackers and soda. Students will have a deeper understanding how food is digested in the body. Materials: Crackers- 2 per student Dixie cup of Soda- 1 per student Ziploc bag- 2 per student Time considerations: Preparation Time: 10-15 minutes Activity time: 10 minutes References: Hickland, Karen. Body Systems: Digestive System: Digestion in a Bag. 01 June 2011. 13 October 2014. <http://sciencemattersblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ body-systems-digestive-systemdigestion.html?m=0>. Hill, Karen. Where Does Food Go After You Eat It? 07 October 2007. 14 October 2014. <http://superbeefy.com/where-doesfood-go-after-you-eat-it/>. Jeffries, Melissa. How the Digestive System Works. May 2011. 15 October 2014. <http://health.howstuffworks.com/h umanbody/systems/digestive/digestivesystem2.htm>. McGuigan, Brendan. How Does Stomach Acid Break Down Food? Ed. Phil Riddel and Bronwyn Harris. 06 October 2014. Conjecture Corporation. 15 October 2014. <http://www.wisegeek.org/howdoes-stomach-acid-break-downfood.htm>. Rosmanitz, Klaus. Nutrition; How the Body Uses Food. n.d. 15 October 2014. <http://www.englishonline.at/health_medicine/nutrition/ nutrition-how-the-body-usesfood.htm>. WebMD. WebMD. 2009. 14 October 2014. <http://www.webmd.com/digestivedisorders/picture-of-the-intestines>. absorbed, and the rest is waste, ready to get out of your body (Jeffries). My last topic I will be covering is how food is turned into nutrients. There are six core groups of nutrients; protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins and water. Water helps break down food and it is vital that we drink enough water every day. Water can even be found in fruits, vegetables and other food. Water does not give us energy unlike carbohydrates, which is a main source of energy. Both starches and sugars have carbohydrates. Some sugary foods that contain that kind of energy are honey, jelly and dairy products. Some starches are found in beans, bread, potatoes, and pasta. Fats come from Animals and plants. This could include meat, butter, and cheese. Other types of fats can be found in seed, nuts and vegetable oil. Proteins are very important for our body. Protein helps build our muscles’, skin and hair. The body can produce its own protein, but it isn’t enough, so it is essential to get enough protein. Some foods that contain protein is nuts, eggs, fish, meat, milk and beans. Minerals are vital for growth. They are inorganic so, they are not made up of living things. One mineral is iron which you can get from certain foods. Other minerals are Fluorine and Zinc. People need vitamins to stay healthy. Rosmanitz lists some important types of vitamins in the following quote: “Vitamin A, for example, helps skin and hair grow. Vitamin C is needed to fight off infections. Vitamin D helps the growth of bones and teeth” (Rosmanitz). All these things that are apart of nutrients are found in food, which is broken down through the digestive system and spread through our bodies to help us grow. In conclusion, you should have a better sense of how the digestive system works and what kind of things the body pulls from the food. It is important for children to know what is happening in their bodies. It is also important for kids to understand how the digestive system works and how it helps us grow and develop Preparation: Collect the required materials. (listed blow) Materials : Saltine crackers Dixie cup Soda Ziploc baggies At each students desk you will need to set out these materials: one cup with soda, two saltine crackers and two Ziploc baggies (one bag inside the other). Procedure: Pre-Activity QuestionsWhere does food go after you eat it? What is the digestive System? How is food turned into Nutrients? Activity: 1.Discuss the information about the digestive system that in the background material. Start off with asking the pre-activity questions. 2.Beggining the experiment, ask students to place the crackers into the bag. What does this represent? This represents the bag as a mouth and the crackers as food going into your mouth. 3. Next ask kids to seal their Ziploc bag and begin to crush the crackers with their hands. What does this represent? The crushing of the crackers represents how your teeth break down the food, which is the first step of digestion. 4. Now it is time for the soda to be added into their Ziploc bag. After the soda is in the bag tell them to reseal it. Tell them to pay attention to what the cracker is doing. What does the soda represent? How did the cracker respond to the soda? 5. In conclusion, Have your students contine to break up the cracker with their hands. What does breaking up the cracker even further represent? What is the next step in this journey for the food? Assessment: Have the children dicuss the diferent parts of the digestive system by asking some of the following questions: Why is it important to eat healthy foods? Why is digestion important? How does the digestion system effect our lives? Have each student fill out a coloring worksheet and fill out four main parts of the digestive system. Have the students color and label the following: Mouth-Yellow Stomach- Red Small intestine- Blue Large intestine- Green