What Goes In. . . Links for Studying the Digestive System

A gloomy day here in the American South.  We had icy streets last night, making it slick going as we drove home from the children's Christmas musical at church.  Today is above freezing, but rainy.  A perfect day for a hot cup of Darjeeling, which now sits by my mousepad.

As I mentioned in my last Weekly Wrap-Up, we are studying the digestive system in science.  I found some neat online resources that have jazzed up our educational pursuits in this arena.  I thought I'd share them with you.

This Google page, Images for Digestive System for Kids, features a ton of images, available online.  I liked several because they were easy to study and others because they featured digestive organs in different colors to stand out.  Also, if you click on an image, you can see on which website it resides, giving you a host of research options.

One of the images I selected linked to a neat article for kids that explains the digestive process in a fun, but not silly, way.  "The Real Deal on the Digestive System" even offers a nifty diagram with mouse roll-over information and easy pronunciation guides (esophagus can be tricky if you've never heard it before!)

I also found a few games that the girls enjoyed.  The Canadian Museum of Nature website features a "Build a Digestive System" drag-and-drop game, both for a human body and a bison.  (!)  My girls played both, and it was an interesting comparison activity.  After the game is over, the website jumps into a computer-generated video that follows an alimentary bolus (basically, a small portion of food) through the digestive system.  We loved this.  Tiny Girl said, "It's like a roller coaster!"  Sciencenetlinks.com features an All Systems Go drag-and-drop game that we liked, as well.

This website, neoK12, had lots of great online activities, videos, and games.  We particularly enjoyed the Digestive Organs Quiz #1.  We also found some interesting videos, like this one, which is about 4.5 minutes long:

Health: Digestive System 101

More educational games & videos on Digestive System at NeoK12.com  

It went into a tad more detail than we have been learning, but there's nothing wrong with that!

A quick Google search for "digestive system games" and "digestive system for kids" yielded WAY more results than one family needs; but that's a good thing.  These interactive games and videos greatly enhanced our understanding of the digestive system and underscored the material we'd already covered in our two books, Uncover the Human Body and An Illustrative Adventure in Human Anatomy.

Enjoy!