Twice the Fun: Big Bro's "Layers of the Earth" Work Does Double Duty for Little Bro's "Five Senses" Work

A few days ago, Big Bro was very into learning about volcanoes.
He did three part cards for the volcano terms and for the layers of the Earth, but the cards showed a cutaway segment instead of "peeling"or melting back the layers.
Was trying to think of something that show the concept of the Earth's layers from the perspective that Big Bro seemed to want to see them" as if the layers were melted off from each other."
As I was searching for something to show this perspective for Big Bro to as independent work, I realized that there could be a tie in for Little Bro, too...Little Bro had been doing some work on the Five Senses...
Then, voila!
I remembered seeing an activity / science experiment of sorts where children were supposed to place some candy jaw breakers into water and watch them and record their observations.

Looked and looked to see where I had originally found the sheets for this activity, as unfortunately, I do not remember...thought that they came from Kelly's Kindergarten, but did not see them on there...so if you see your lovely sheets in the photos or if you know where these originated, please let me know so that I can give a shout out to thank that person...
Well, here's how it works: you take a jaw breaker and let it soak in water and observe the changes to it.
I had selected this absolutely gigantic jaw breaker...the boys and I thought that it was cool, as it was a deep green with speckles of white, red, yellow, and a little blue on it.
So, the boys took this monster of a candy and soaked it in water...we used somewhat warm water to start, as I was hoping to get things moving along...
the boys took turns adding the water by using a child sized baster.
They also took turns checking the temp of the water with a digital meat thermometer.
They then recorded the changes in color, size, and texture.
Big Bro was especially happy to see a sphere that was changing in size and texture. Little Bro kept wanting to add more water, as he loves doing water transfer work. He was easily able to use his senses to feel, touch, smell, and even taste the jaw breaker. For the tasting part, I took a teaspoon of the water and let him taste the sugary water. At the very end of the entire work, both boys took a lick of what was left of the jawbreaker, one on one side and one licked the other...
They noted their observations on the form and then, near the end of the observation, they dictated their findings and I wrote those down for them.
One thing that was interesting is that both boys seemed to want to see some three part cards showing the layers as if the layers were melted off instead of a section sliced out...
overall, it went well...just a few notes though if you decide to do this...
The huge jaw breaker was great initially, as it was easier to observe, due to its larger size.
However, as time wore on and the jaw breaker still wasn't totally dissolved, it sort of lost a little of its initial oomph.
If we were to do it again, maybe I would use a smaller one or maybe we would start with warmer water.