Adventures in a Messy Life

Hands on learning for active learners

  • Home page
    • Start Here
    • About Us
    • Get all of the posts now!
    • Disclosure and other blogging information
  • Homeschooling
    • Homeschool Curriculum
    • Why I homeschool (comments from a former teacher)
    • Homeschooling and the Holidays
  • History and geography
    • Ancient History Lessons
    • Modern History lessons
    • American History Lessons
    • LEGO history
  • Science
  • Bible Curriculum
  • STORE

How to make a candy spine

June 28, 2017 Ticia 17 Comments

Can I just say I got some strange things as I tried searching “candy spine?”  Oh, and this was a very popular science lesson, something about the crazy sugar high they were on after making AND eating the silly candy spine thing made it one of our most popular anatomy lessons of the year.

Create a candy spinal cord

 

{This post contains affiliate links.  For more information read my disclosure page}

Supplies for a candy spine

Supplies for edible spinal column

(I bought packages large enough for 4 kids, we didn’t have all that much leftover)

Lifesavers Hard Candy, Five Flavor, 41 Oz (anyone else remember the packs where the lifesavers stuck together?), LifeSavers Gummies, 5 Flavor, 7 Ounce (you might order 2, I got ours at the store), Licorice Strawberry Laces, 16 Oz (we got ours at Lamme’s Candy and had some leftover)

How to make a candy spine

candy spine prep

Very first thing, take a few minutes to get all of those hard lifesavers out of their wrappers.  You will be glad you did this later as you’re wrangling stuff, and it lets you make sure none of the pieces are broken.

candy spine

  1. Weave 2 licorice whips through the first hard lifesaver.  Then take turns layering the hard and gummy lifesavers on the “spinal cord” of your candy spine.
  2. Break some of the licorice whips into smaller pieces and put that between each of the hard and gummy lifesavers.

Take a silly break in your lessons from time to time

Take a break from the “learning” to model your spinal column and be generally silly.  That’s always very important.

Or it is in our house.

 

Now, let’s talk through why we used each part of this candy spine.

 

candy spinal column

First we used two licorice whips because our spinal cord is multiple nerve fibers clustered together.  If we could have forced more than 2 through there I would have, but two made it difficult enough.

The hard lifesavers represent our vertebrae, which is to protect our spine and lets us stand upright.  Without them we wouldn’t be able to walk upright, AND we’d probably be paralyzed before we were 5.  All animals with skeletons have a spine of some sort.

Intervertabral discs are necessary so we aren’t in constant pain.  It’s the cartilage between our vertebrae.  Again without these we can’t move because our spine would be in a bunch of painful pieces by the wear and tear of the vertebrae.

The final piece we don’t think about is the large numbers of nerve clusters exiting our spine all along it.  This is the part I added in from other candy spines I’ve seen.  These nerve clusters exit our spine and go out to the rest of our body to communicate.  This is where the nerves come from that go to our hands, our legs, everywhere.

And of course at the end of the lesson you need to

at the end of the lesson you have to eat a candy spine

eat that candy spine.  As disturbing an image as that is, but it was quite popular with the kids, as you can imagine.

Oh, and before I forget:  More nervous system activities and ideas

play dough brain model for elementary
how does our brain work for elementary
how do neurons work
  • Anatomy pinterest board

science anatomy, grocery store science

Comments

  1. Almost Unschoolers says

    July 13, 2014 at 8:56 am

    Of course you know the first thing I had to do was do a search for “candy spine” 🙂 Great project though – I’m sure it would be a big hit here too.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      July 15, 2014 at 7:57 pm

      Of course, large amounts of candy 🙂

  2. Lindsay @ BytesofMemory says

    July 13, 2014 at 9:25 am

    What fun!! I will certainly be pinning this for our body unit next year!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      July 15, 2014 at 7:57 pm

      You’ll enjoy it so much. We loved studying the body this year.

  3. Phyllis at All Things Beautiful says

    July 13, 2014 at 10:12 am

    I just love this! It is brilliant. I have made the gummy lifesaver and wagon wheel pasta column, but this is leaps and bounds better. I love the nerve clusters! Oh, I think we will have to go back and make these next year!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      July 15, 2014 at 7:59 pm

      I kinda like the nerve clusters, because it seems so integral to the idea.

      Pasta wheels would work really well, I hadn’t really thought of that as an idea. Of course hen you wouldn’t have a super cool all candy spine.

  4. Lucinda @ Navigating By Joy says

    July 13, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    We will do this for sure, too! Fantastic idea.

    I can’t believe Lifesavers now come individually wrapped. Saves getting the chisel out I guess. We call them Polos in Britain for some reason. (Of course I just had to look that up. Apparently it’s because the mint flavoured ones were so cool and fresh – “polar”. Right that’s enough tangenting.)

    Thank you for hosting Science Sunday.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      July 15, 2014 at 8:00 pm

      I know, it just didn’t seem right they are individually wrapped now. Such a cop out 😉

  5. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    July 13, 2014 at 5:50 pm

    Very cool! And delicious 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      July 15, 2014 at 8:01 pm

      I know, I hadn’t remembered how much I liked Lifesavers until I started eating them.

  6. Natalie PlanetSmartyPants says

    July 13, 2014 at 10:33 pm

    Such an original idea for learning about spinal cord! Love it.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      July 15, 2014 at 8:01 pm

      It was so much fun to do.

  7. Nadine says

    January 26, 2015 at 1:50 pm

    What a great idea! Before I clicked the link I was thinking a spinal cord made of nerds rope, but I don’t know what you could thread it through

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      January 26, 2015 at 3:53 pm

      Thanks! We’ve been reviewing anatomy this week, so I’ve actually been thinking about this project a lot.

  8. Homeschool Literature says

    February 22, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    This is honestly a fabulous idea for teaching the kids about the anatomy of the spine! Genius! The hands-on element is bound to make a longer impact as well, I’ll bet. It would also make a great demonstration for what happens when people get paralyzed–such as, part of their spinal cord is damaged so they lose feeling to those areas of their body from the nerves exiting the spine. I love this candy spine!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      February 23, 2017 at 7:43 am

      Thanks! It was certainly a big hit with my kids when we did it.

  9. samantha says

    April 2, 2019 at 3:00 pm

    i love it

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

Help!!!! I need to know:

Categories

300 books made into movies

Copyright © 2023 ·