Our Digestive System

Wednesday (28/05/2009)

a) Fire Stones
Ze Yan: What are those for?
Sharlene: Did you get those 2 rocks from FRIM?
I shared with the kids the rocks from FRIM. These rocks were used by the cavemen to produce friction and make fire. Sometime, this method is used by campers.
Rub the two rocks together and in the dark, one can see the sparkles.
Song Chuan said that some people used woods to rub and get fire.
However, people don’t do that at home nowadays because it’s dangerous. Furthermore, it’s troublesome. Just but a match or a lighter.

b) The Body Structure
It was very nice of Eugene to share his family’s Body Structure Model. We een lent to the other classes to have a look.
While dismantling the parts, we learnt the names as well as the functions of “Digestive System”.
Sharlene: We need muscle to do many things.
Example: pull, push, carry and hit the mosquito (Justin).
We also need muscle to help us in food digestion.
Vocabulary: brain, throat (esophagus), lungs, blood veins (red- oxygen; grey – without oxyen but with carbon Dioxide), the heart, stomach, lungs, kidneys and rectum.

c) The Digestive System
When we eat food such as apple and a burger, the teeth would cut them into smaller pieces with the help of saliva.
They would go down through our throat into stomach. Stomach would secrete juices and Hydrochloric Acid is the strongest juice.
They would break the food into smaller pieces together with the help of stomach’s 3 strong muscle. Our stomach would take 4 hours before turning them into mixture similar to milk shake call “chime”. Thus, we usually get hungry after 4 – 5 hours.
Chyme goes into small intestines. Juices are also produced here to break the food so that villi of small intestine can absorb the minerals and nutrients.
The leftover is usually water and fiber that go into big intestines.
About 100 types of bacteria are in big intestine that will further break our food. In the process, bacterias produce bad odour. Thus, our faeces or “motion” is smelly.

d) FRIM Drawing
The kids recalled the sharings of yesterday. I helped them to label the pictures they have in mind. Example: waterfall, rocks, trees, snakes, hill, FRIM Kepong and etc.
They drew happily into their Record Book.