Creating A "Stomach"!

We have been "building our bodies" in our homeschool science time.  Each week we explore a different organ or area of our body, color the part and attach it to our paper body outlines (I'll share pictures of those later, once they're completed).  This week we learned about our digestive system and did a couple of hands-on activities to simulate different organs of our digestive system.  This is when we created our simulated stomach.  It's such an easy and great simulation, and the children love it because it's fun and gross (especially beautiful words to young boys!).  ;)

Here's some pictures…

Take a ziploc bag and add a cracker and a half piece of bread (our bags were sandwich size).

It's nearly impossible to get this boy to make a good smiling face and they were already preparing themselves for the gross part of the experiment.  :)

Jadon's gross face.

Add 1/2 cup vinegar to simulate stomach acid.  I liked using an acidic substitute, but water would work, just not as fast.

Mash the food around with the vinegar with your fingers to simulate the stomach muscle action.

Within minutes our food is mixed and mashed into bits and ready to go into our small intestines!  ;)