Begin with chewing
Smaller pieces prepare food for the model breakdown step.
Digestion Journey
Chew, break down and absorb sample food units along a simplified digestive path.
Grades 2–5 · Biology
Your goal
Chew, break down food in the stomach model, then absorb 2 food units through the small intestine wall.
Reduced motion is on. The controls still update the scene.
Mouth. 8 food units not yet broken down, 0 available to absorb, 0 absorbed, 0 remaining as residue. Particle size 4. The eight sample food units stay accounted for.
Chewing makes smaller pieces. Mechanical mixing and chemical digestion break food down, and many nutrients pass through the small intestine wall into blood. Breakdown also occurs in the mouth and small intestine, which this model compresses into a stomach step. The large intestine absorbs water and holds residue; water is not tracked here. These eight sample units are bookkeeping tokens, not nutrient predictions or medical advice.
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Learn with Digestion Journey
Digestion Journey helps elementary students separate three ideas that happen along the digestive system. Chew a sample food in the mouth to reduce its particle size, move it to the stomach model for breakdown, and continue to the small intestine to absorb available units into the illustrated blood vessel. A running count keeps all eight sample units accounted for as unbroken food, available material, absorbed material or residue. Students can continue to the large intestine to inspect what remains. The activity explains that real digestion spans several organs and includes processes omitted here.
What to look for
Separate two processes
Breakdown makes units available; absorption moves them into blood.
Track the sample
All eight sample food units remain accounted for.
For teachers and curious learners
Distinguish food movement, breakdown and absorption into blood. Ask students to predict what will happen, change one setting, and explain what they observe. Learn gives a starting point. Practice and Challenge offer new goals with the same scene.
Eight sample bookkeeping units with compressed breakdown steps. Water absorption, chemical detail, real nutrient amounts and medical interpretation are not modeled.