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.
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Supplies for a candy spine
(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?),
How to make a candy spine
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.
- 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.
- Break some of the licorice whips into smaller pieces and put that between each of the hard and gummy lifesavers.
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.
First, we used two licorice whips because our spinal cord has 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 let 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.
Intervertebral 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 number 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 eat that candy spine. As disturbing an image as that is, it was quite popular with the kids, as you can imagine.
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