Anatomy III

After our study of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, we were moving on to the digestive system.  It also worked out that Kate was studying how to make casings in Home Ec.  How often to Home Ec. and anatomy converge, unless your getting stitches in the ER?

I bought a yard of pink fabric that we cut into two inch strips.  I sewed about half of them together in to a very long strand (a yard was too much).  Then Kate got to work sewing them as a casing.  We kept all the seams on the outside, with the home of a smooth interior.  We cut a very thin elastic to half the length of our casing intestines.  This gave our intestines that bunched appearance.

From the top down, we placed our esophagus (a pipe cut to length) and glued it in place.  I whip stitched a stomach out of felt, which slid over the end of the esophagus.  In the back of the felt, I cut a couple of slits and Nate zip tied it to the cardboard sk-ELLIE-ton.  I hand stitched the intestines to the base of the stomach opening.  Then we made three slits for zip ties one each side of the cardboard.  Kate and I worked the intestines back and forth and caught them up with the zip ties.  The plan had been to pull them loosely so we could drop a marble through the esophagus, and work it through the system, but one of the children was a bit over zealous and pulled too hard on the zip tie!

Supplies:
1/2 yard of pink cotton fabric (cut into 2' wide ribbons)
elastic
pink felt
1" pipe
thread
sewing machine
needle
Sk-ELLIE-ton

Kristy