Grade 5 · Science · Unit 1 of 6
Digestion & Breathing
Your digestive and respiratory systems
What your child practises
How food travels through the digestive system and air through the respiratory system, plus reading a breathing-rate table.
NWT Curriculum learning standard: Basic structures and functions of body systems: digestive and respiratory
Sample questions
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
Put the parts of the digestive system in the order food travels through them.
- 💧Large intestine: water is absorbed
- 🩸Small intestine: nutrients pass into the blood
- 🌀Stomach: acid and juices churn the food
- 👄Mouth: teeth chew and saliva mixes in
- ⬇️Esophagus: muscles squeeze food down
Mouth: teeth chew and saliva mixes in → Esophagus: muscles squeeze food down → Stomach: acid and juices churn the food → Small intestine: nutrients pass into the blood → Large intestine: water is absorbed
Hint: Food is chewed in the mouth, squeezed down the esophagus, churned in the stomach, then moves through the small intestine and finally the large intestine.
Question 2
Which waste gas do you breathe out?
💨- carbon dioxide
- hydrogen
- oxygen
- helium
carbon dioxide
Hint: Your cells make carbon dioxide as waste. The blood carries it to the lungs, and you breathe it out.
Question 3
Which part of digestion is a chemical change, not just a physical one?
- teeth grinding food into small pieces
- esophagus muscles pushing food down
- the stomach churning food
- saliva breaking starch down into sugars
saliva breaking starch down into sugars
Hint: Chewing and churning only make pieces smaller. Saliva actually changes starch into a new substance: sugar.
Question 4
Which organ absorbs most of the nutrients from food into the blood?
- the stomach
- the esophagus
- the small intestine
- the large intestine
the small intestine
Hint: The small intestine is long and lined with tiny finger-like bumps that pass nutrients into the blood.
Question 5
What is the diaphragm, and what does it do?
- a dome-shaped muscle under the lungs that helps you breathe
- a flap that covers the windpipe when you swallow
- an organ that makes digestive juices
- a tube that carries food to the stomach
a dome-shaped muscle under the lungs that helps you breathe
Hint: When the diaphragm tightens and moves down, the chest gets bigger and air rushes into the lungs.
Question 6
Digestive system or respiratory system? Tap an item, then tap its basket.
Sort into: 🍽️ digestive · 🫁 respiratory
- 🍞small intestine absorbs nutrients
- 🦷teeth grind food
- 🔄alveoli swap oxygen and carbon dioxide
- ⬇️esophagus pushes food down
- 👃nose warms and filters air
- 💨trachea carries air to the lungs
🍽️ digestive: small intestine absorbs nutrients, teeth grind food, esophagus pushes food down · 🫁 respiratory: alveoli swap oxygen and carbon dioxide, nose warms and filters air, trachea carries air to the lungs
Hint: The digestive system breaks down food. The respiratory system brings in oxygen and gets rid of carbon dioxide.