Hunger

Sensory integration

﻿Hi, my name is Anele and we are looking at the interoceptive sense. And today we are going to find out what happens when we are hungry. We, as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. Before we continue with this lesson, I want you to pause the video here, to complete and get everything ready that you need. You're going to need a cold drink, an old sock, sand, flour, some water, and some scissors. So once you've got all of these things together, press play, and then we are ready to carry on with this lesson. So we are going to carry on looking at interoception. And we know that it helps us to stay alive. It helps us to be healthy, to make sense of our feelings. It also helps us to make decisions to play, to learn and to be independent. We're specifically going to look at our stomach. Now here's something that I'm going to teach you today. Our stomach is connected with our mouth and our throat by a tube called the oesophagus. Now, I really struggled to say this word. So I had to go and ask my daughter to explain to me how the word is pronounced. So let's say it together one more time. It's oesophagus. And this oesophagus is just the tube that kind of brings the food from your mouth and your throat all the way into your tummy. And then inside your tummy, there are juices that help digest this food into much smaller pieces. Your tummy has muscles that squish the food around by squeezing the food into smaller pieces. But you know, when you're ill, you're tummy may push some of that food back up that long tube and back into your mouth. And that is what's called vomiting, or when we're feeling sick and being sick. But did you know that when you worry and when you're kind of feeling a little bit sad, sometimes your tummy can also be sore. We're going to find out and see you if we can track water all the way from our mouth and our throat all the way down to our oesophagus. Down, right down into our tummy. So what do you need to do? It really helps to do a cold drink because that helps to detect it a lot better. So can you feel the cold water travelling all the way from your mouth all the way down to your tummy when you have a drink? Pause the video here and have a go and tell your parent or carer whether you can track that water all the way as it goes down into your tummy. Okay, so let's see if we can make a sock tummy. You are going to need your sock. You're going to ask your parent or carer to please help you with this activity. And first of all, you're going to mix the sand or the flour with water until it's like a muddy paste. Now, you're going to fill yourself to about three quarters full with the paste. And then you're going to ask your parent or carer to help you with the scissors to cut the bottom toe off the sock. Now, here's the fun bit. Use your hands to see if you can squeeze that flour mud paste all the way through the sock, all the way to the other end. And you know, that's exactly how your tummy works. Your tummy has muscles that contract and they squeeze the food and they make it into smaller bits first, and then they push it all the way down to your intestines. So pause the video here and then complete this task and press play once you've finished. Wow. That was amazing. So let's see if we can learn a little bit more about our tummies. The digestive food from the tummy moves all the way through our intestines. The intestines is, first of all, a long thin tube and then it becomes a thicker tube at the end. And our intestines, this long tube, is really important because what it does, all the food that you're tummy have digested, your intestines will now take out all the good nutrients from the food, and they will push it into the blood, into your blood and then your blood will take it to the rest of your body. And all the waste, all the leftover stuff that your body doesn't need, it will carry on to be pushed all the way down these long tubes and down to your intestines. And then that becomes your poo and your urine. So that is amazing how important our tummy is. And for us to feel when our tummy is full and when our tummy is empty. So when you have a grumbly tummy that usually tells you that your tummy needs some food. And you know when you feel really, really full? In your tummy, when you've just had a lovely meal and you kind of want to take a deep breath and you want to go, woo, that was a lovely meal! That's your tummy sending a little message to your brain to say, listen, I've had enough food, thank you very much. I'm now going to need some time to digest all of this food. Let's think a little bit more about our tummy, especially when we're feeling worried or angry. Sometimes when you are hungry, you might actually feel a little bit angry. Some people call it hangry with a huh in front of the angry. So it's always a good idea that if you haven't had anything to eat for a while that you may want to try it, first of all, to try and have a small snack, because that might actually make you feel less angry. Sometimes when we worry our tummy, may be really sore and ache. And we've already learned that our lungs and how we can change our breathing, but changing your breath and the pace of your breath really has an effect on your tummy too. So by changing your breathing, you can help your tummies to relax a little bit more. And let's do an activity together. And we can try this out. So you're going to pause the video here to complete this task and ask your parent or carer to join you. So, first of all, clear a space and lie down on your back. Now take a slow, deep breath to fill your tummy up with air, as if you're trying to blow up a big balloon. Expand your belly as much as you can. Now, slowly let the air out by breathing out through your nose, if you can, as you release your breath from your tummy. Let's do that one more time and this time we going to count. So you're going to breathe in two, three, four. You're going to hold it, two three. Now we're going to breathe out two, three, four, five. Brilliant. Now pause the video and you can have another go with your parent or carer to help you. And once you've finished, press play and we will finish the lesson together. Well done! You have done great. You've learned about your tummy. And I hope that you've learned a little bit about being hungry, but also what to do when you are worried and stressed and how you can change using your breath. You can change and you can help your tummy to be a little bit calmer, a little bit more relaxed. Have a great day.

Hunger

Hunger

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Equipment

Licence

Lesson video