We are learning about the human body.  This morning we discovered our amazing digestive system.  Alex was very excited about this because he could say “poop” a bunch!  He is a boy and he is 6 so being able to say “poop” a bunch makes for a fun day of learning.

We started out with a video.  We watched a log ride through the human body!  Alex really liked the ending….yep you guessed it…poop.

Alex really enjoys art.  He colored a poster made from two sheets of paper.  We then glued it onto a template so you can lift the tabs and learn about different parts of the digestive system.  Alex is very proud of this.  It is now hanging on the wall!

We got this book online. It has a TON of human body resources in it!  (I put a link to the book this came from at the bottom of this post)

Next, I wanted Alex to realize how long his digestive system is.  I took yarn and cut it into sections and labeled each section for what it represented.  The mouth was 3 inches, esophagus 10 inches, stomach 6 inches, small intestine 15 feet, and large intestine 4 feet.

Next we tied it all together.  Alex took one end and I took the other end and we went our separate ways to see how extremely long his digestive system is.  He was blown away with this.  We calculated his height and discovered that his digestive system is 4 of him!  As you can see in the photo below Audrey really liked this activity too!

It was almost lunch time.  I had one more fun project for the kids. Ava was now interested because we were having so much fun.  We were going to learn how the stomach works.  I rolled a piece of paper into a tube then placed it into a gallon ziplock bag with about 2 cups of water in the bottom of it.  I zipped the baggie on either side of our tube.  I explained that the tube was our esophagus, the baggie was our stomach, and the water was our stomach acid.

Ava checking out our stomach model

Ava put a piece of bread into the tube (esophagus).

Ava putting bread into the espophogus

Then her hands pretended to be the stomach muscles working on digesting the bread.  They really enjoyed this!

Stomach mussels (Ava's hands) churning up food in stomch acid

Alex thought it was so fun because it “looked disgusting!”.  The bag is on our counter waiting for their daddy to come home and see it.

We finished up, packed lunch, and ate at a park.  The conversation at the park was mostly about digestion.  “Where is our food now” and “I can feel my tummy churning up my food!”.  Operation digestive system fun was a success!

We learned a bunch about the digestive system this morning and we all had a blast while learning.   This is what homeschooling is all about….spending time together, learning together, and having FUN together!

I love homeschooling.

Here is a link to the book we used for the digestive system flap book.  It has a ton human body activities: