DOWN – THE – HATCH !

Digestive System Learning and Review Game

Feed Me NowPeople (like all animals) eat food

because we need fuel. Food provides energy to each and every cell in your body, and the building blocks you need to create new cells.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything you eat would be poison if it went right into your bloodstream. Before your body can use it, it has to be broken down into smaller parts you can use. This is called digestion.

That’s a MOUTHful What is drool anyway? It’s your

saliva, and its made by six glands in your mouth. The glands start working as soon as you smell or see something cooking. Your salivary glands make about six cups of saliva every day. That’s a lot of drool!

As soon as you put something into your mouth, saliva begins dissolving some of the foods’ nutritious chemicals, softening it so that it can be swallowed safely.

Body OddityIf it weren’t for your epiglottis, you’d be in big trouble! The epiglottis is a flappy piece of flesh at the top of your throat. It closes off your windpipe so food wont go down the wrong way and block your air supply.

Down the Hatch Once you have converted that cookie into a slimy ball

of mush, its ready to be swallowed. Your tongue pushes it to the back of your throat and it travels down a ten-inch tube called your esophagus. Your esophagus is surrounded by lots of muscles that love to squeeze. These in and out movements are called peristalsis. Peristalsis moves the food

you swallow from your esophagus downto your stomach. It works so well that you can even swallow standing on your head!

Can You Stomach It? You probably think your

stomach is near your belly button. Its not– its up and off to the left, behind your ribs. The stomach is a J shape. When its empty its only about as big as one fifth of a cup, but it can stretch to hold eight cups of food!

Yum Yum As your stomach

churns, it mixes your meal with stomach acids that help break down the food. These acids are so powerful they’d burn your skin, in fact the hydrochloric acid in your gut could actually burn a hole through carpet.

Burn Baby, Burn Above your stomach is a little valve made of

muscle, called a sphincter. When food is on its way, the sphincter opens quickly. The rest of the time, it stays squeezed shut. Once in a while, the sphincter doesn’t close enough and acid splashes up from your stomach to burn your esophagus. This is called heartburn.

Is it Soup Yet? After about six hours in

your stomach, food starts to look like pea soup. This mash is called chyme. Nutrients from the chyme soak through the stomach walls into your bloodstream. Then peristalsis moves the rest along, squirting it out of the stomach two or three teaspoons at a time.

To the Intestines…and Beyond After the stomach

comes your two intestines. Not only are they different sizes but they do different jobs. The small intestine sucks all the nutrients out of the food; the large intestine prepares the leftovers for their trip to the toilet.

Get it Out of Here! A digestive problem you

are probably way too familiar with is throwing up or vomiting. The lining of your stomach get very upset. It tosses and turns, and sends a message to your brain, and the brain then allows the sphincter to open and let the lumpy undigested food up the esophagus and out your mouth.

What’s THAT? !Make a simple

digestive system drawing in your notes

Label the parts like the one on the right

Test your knowledge – be the first to land in the toilet…