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Body & wellness activity

Digestion Journey

Where does food go after you eat it? Take a bite and trace the journey with your finger, from mouth to tummy.

Hands OnAbout 30 minutesScreen-freeParent help expected

Materials and setup

Parent note

Food-allergy note: swap crackers, banana, and meat for allergen-safe alternatives. Do not eat anything used in the Upper Elem vinegar experiment. Dispose of all experiment food after use.

How this changes by age

Pre-K (ages 3–4)

Where does food go after you eat it? Take a bite and trace the journey with your finger, from mouth to tummy.

Difficulty 1 of 3

Steps

  1. Eat a small cracker slowly. Chew and chew. Notice: 'My teeth crunch it. My tongue pushes it around. It gets wet and soft.'
  2. Swallow. Put a finger on your throat — feel the 'gulp' as food goes down.
  3. Trace the path with your finger on your body: mouth → throat → belly. Say 'mouth, throat, tummy!'
  4. Look at a simple diagram together. Point to each stop: 'This is where food starts. This is where it goes. This is where it stops to turn into fuel for your body.'
  5. Dance the digestion song: wiggle your mouth (chewing), pat your throat (swallow), rub your belly (digesting), jump up (energy!). 'Food becomes energy!'
  6. Drink a small glass of water. 'Water helps food move through.'

Learning objectives

  • Name 3 stops on the food journey: mouth, throat, belly
  • Connect chewing and swallowing to the start of digestion
  • Understand that food becomes energy for the body

Kindergarten (ages 5–6)

Build a simple digestion model with a bag, a tube, and a snack. See what happens to food on the inside.

Difficulty 2 of 3

Steps

  1. Materials: 1 sealable plastic bag (the 'stomach'), 1 paper towel tube (the 'esophagus'), 3 crackers, 3 tablespoons of orange juice or water, banana slice.
  2. Start at the mouth: put a cracker in your own mouth and chew thoroughly. Spit into a bowl to show what chewed cracker looks like — mashed and wet. (Or just describe it.)
  3. Drop 2 crackers down the paper towel tube into the bag — 'the esophagus pushes food to the stomach'.
  4. Add the banana slice, then pour in the OJ — 'the stomach adds acid and enzymes to break food down'.
  5. Seal the bag and squish it for 2 minutes with your hands — 'the stomach muscles churn food'.
  6. Open the bag. The food is now a mushy slurry called chyme. 'This is what leaves the stomach and enters the intestines.'
  7. Draw what chyme looks like and label: mouth → esophagus → stomach → chyme.
  8. Throw the bag away when done.

Learning objectives

  • Model the first 3 digestion stages: mouth, esophagus, stomach
  • Use the vocabulary 'esophagus', 'stomach', 'chyme'
  • Describe mechanical (chewing, churning) and chemical (acid, enzymes) digestion at a basic level

Early elementary (ages 6–8)

Build the full 30-foot digestive tract. Discover how your intestines fit 30 feet of tubing into your abdomen.

Difficulty 2 of 3

Steps

  1. Roll out 30 feet of yarn or rope in a hallway — this is the length of your digestive tract from mouth to anus. Walk its length and try to imagine it inside you. (Yes, really — coiled up.)
  2. Build a labeled tabletop model: mouth (bowl of water = saliva), esophagus (paper towel tube, ~10 inches), stomach (zip bag, 1-gallon size), small intestine (pantyhose leg stuffed with cotton balls, ~22 feet real length), large intestine (wider tube or thick stocking, ~5 feet real length), anus (small opening at end).
  3. Run a snack through: soft bread + juice. Chew, spit into the 'stomach' bag, squish with juice (simulate acid). Push the contents through the 'small intestine' pantyhose by squeezing bit by bit. This squeezing motion is called peristalsis.
  4. Teach peristalsis by example: squeeze a tennis ball through a long sock by pushing from the outside. Your smooth muscles do this automatically.
  5. Research what happens at each stage: mouth (mechanical + saliva enzyme breaks starch), stomach (acid + pepsin break protein), small intestine (most nutrient absorption through villi — tiny fingerlike projections), large intestine (water absorption, waste formation).
  6. Label each section of your model with its main job.
  7. Calculate: if your tract is 30 feet and food takes 24-72 hours to travel through, how many inches per hour is that? (Answer: about 5-15 inches/hour — fast in the upper tract, slow in the lower.)

Learning objectives

  • Model the full 30-foot digestive tract with all major sections
  • Demonstrate peristalsis using a mechanical analog
  • Identify the primary digestive function at each stage

Upper elementary (ages 8–10)

Investigate the enzymes at each digestive stage, map nutrient absorption in the small intestine, and run an experiment showing how different foods break down.

Difficulty 3 of 3

Steps

  1. Learn the 4 key enzyme categories and where they work: amylase (mouth + pancreas → breaks carbs), pepsin (stomach → breaks protein), bile (liver, stored in gallbladder → emulsifies fat), lipase + trypsin + more (pancreas → break fat, protein, carbs in the small intestine).
  2. Starch-saliva experiment: chew a plain unsalted cracker for 60 seconds without swallowing. Does the taste change? It should become sweeter — salivary amylase is breaking starch into simpler sugars. Write what you noticed.
  3. Stomach-acid simulation: place a small cube of firm meat (or a soy-based meat substitute) in each of 2 cups. In cup 1, add water; in cup 2, add white vinegar (pH ~2.5, similar to stomach acid). Check at 1, 4, and 24 hours. Photograph each time. The vinegar-soaked cube should break down visibly.
  4. Research villi: the small intestine's inner surface is covered in 4-5 million tiny fingerlike villi, each covered in microvilli. Together they create ~250 square meters of absorption surface — about a tennis court.
  5. Map which nutrients are absorbed where: mouth (a tiny bit of sugar), stomach (water, alcohol, some medications), small intestine (>90% of carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals), large intestine (water and some vitamins made by gut bacteria).
  6. Run a fat-emulsification demo: fill 2 clear cups halfway with water, add 1 tablespoon cooking oil to each. To cup 2, add a few drops of dish soap and shake. The soap (simulating bile) emulsifies fat into droplets — this is how bile helps your body absorb fat.
  7. Write a 1-page lab report combining all 3 experiments: amylase-starch, acid-protein, and bile-fat. Explain what each demo taught you about real digestion.
  8. Extension: research irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or celiac disease. Write 3 sentences on how it disrupts one part of this process.

Learning objectives

  • Identify the major digestive enzymes and the stages where they act
  • Run and interpret 3 chemistry-based digestion experiments
  • Map nutrient absorption locations across the GI tract

Safety and evidence note

Read the full activity before beginning. An adult should supervise tools, heat, food, outdoor work, movement, and experiments as appropriate. Completion records that the activity was done; the child’s explanation, work sample, photo, or demonstration is stronger evidence of learning than a completion check alone.

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