Spinal Cord model with egg carton and licorice

I found lots of ideas for spinal cord models (this one made with a pool noodle is cool, and I liked this one with gummy rings too), but since we still had licorice from our neuron models, and since I liked the idea of having the spinal cord be thick and tough, yet flexible (rather than just represented by a piece of string as it is in the models linked above), we settled on this egg carton/licorice model.

What you need:

An egg carton to cut up, for the vertebrae

Craft foam (or something kind of spongy), for the vertebral discs

Licorice, for the spinal cord

I chose to use egg carton sections because they really do look quite like vertebrae. We tried both ways: poking holes through the bottom of the egg carton section (Abe's was made like this) and poking holes through the side of the egg carton as shown above. I think I preferred the latter way just because of how it looked, but both ways are fine.

Then you just thread the vertebrae onto the spinal cord, alternating with the discs.

We really liked the way the licorice spinal cord allowed flexibility and movement of the spine. They were fun to play around with.