了解唾液腺和味蕾

Can children recall information about the taste buds and salivary glands?
Can children create a comparative and fair test which explores taste?
Can children describe different tastes?

Quizzes in pupil zone.

Unit knowledge organisers and tests available in unit documents area.

The Science Behind the Science 

Here is something that will blow your mind: salivary glands make saliva. If you’ve never heard of the word saliva, you’ve heard of the word spit. They are the same thing. You have saliva in your mouth right now. It’s the fluid that keeps your mouth and your digestive system wet and super slippery. Saliva is clear and is in your mouth all of the time. It is mainly made up of water and contains some other chemicals.  

Your salivary glands are found on the inside of your cheeks, the bottom of your mouth and at the front of your mouth, under your jaw. Can you believe that they can produce between one to two litres of saliva a day? That’s crazy. There are many advantages to having saliva. Here are a few: saliva aids with digestion, it helps you to taste food, it cleans your mouth and helps to keep your teeth clean. Digestion starts as soon as you place food in your mouth. Your saliva contains many enzymes that aid with the breakdown of food. This facilitates the process of digestion and helps to protect against infections of the mouth.  

Just like saliva helps you to taste food, your taste buds are responsible for making your favourite foods taste so good. They are found on your tongue and help you to distinguish between salty, sweet, sour and bitter tastes. You have lots of bumps on your tongue. The scientific word for these are papillae. These bumps contain the taste buds and all taste buds have microvilli. These are really, really small hairs. They are responsible for sending signals to your brain so that you can distinguish between the different tastes. Without your tongue and your nose, everything would be pretty tasteless. 

Mission Assignment: Pick out foods that will enable you to explore all four basic tastes. That is sweet, salty, bitter and sour. As the children taste the foods, get them to categorise them into the four different taste categories.