el aparato digestivo

In Miriam´s 3rd/4th grade science class on Monday the kids learned about the digestive system. Miriam is the English teacher who doesn´t speak English, so she went over all the organs and their functions in Spanish, then I went over a simplified version in English. Miriam stressed to me the importance of having the kids repeat, repeat, repeat. So my part of the lesson went something like this:

me: The digestive system takes the nutrients out of the food. It starts in the mouth. Then we swallow and the food goes to the esophagus. E-S-O-P-H-A-G-U-S.

class (in unison, more or less): ESOPHAGUS.

me: ESOPHAGUS.

Adrian: Esophagus.

me: Esophagus.

Álvaro: Esophagus.

me: Esophagus.

Alfonso: Esophagus.

....and so on, with all 11 kids in the class repeating the word. Then we moved on and did the same thing with stomach, small intestine, large intestine and, you guessed it, anus. I pronounced the word ´´anus´´ loudly and slowly about 15 times in all, and the kids all said it at least once, and I think I did a pretty amazing job of keeping a straight face that day.