LEGO is what we eat.

LEGO: the tiny plastic bricks keeping kids busy whilst terrorising parents.

Sure, they're great for cultivating creativity.

But they’re also the leading cause of vacuum malfunctions and impromptu yoga sessions on the living room floor whilst fishing out those rogue pieces under the couch.

And let’s not forget the main event — the unmatched agony of stepping on one in the dead of night.

Despite their drawbacks, LEGO is fantastic for teaching your kids complicated concepts.

For example: Metabolism.

We’ve all heard it thrown around in:

• Magazines – “Boost your metabolism!”
• Fitness talks – “Burn those calories!’
• Diet plans – Metabolism-boosting foods anyone?
• Science textbooks – That biological process stuff.
• Medical discussions – Endocrine systems and metabolic disorders.
• Supplements – “Rev up your metabolism!”
• Cooking shows – Talking about the nutritional value of food.

But metabolism is just like building LEGO.

So you can explain it like this:

Imagine your latest LEGO masterpiece is the food you just ate.

Now drop it so it shatters into loads of individual bricks!

That’s your body digesting your meal, breaking it down into its basic building blocks: glucose, amino acids, vitamins, and so on.

This process of breaking things down is called catabolism (think energy release!).

Now, your body takes those pieces and builds them back into something useful, like proteins, enzymes, or new cells—this is anabolism (energy consumption).

So basically, your metabolism is like the ultimate LEGO master builder, always busy breaking down and rebuilding!

Try out this LEGO challenge to help your kids learn and recall the process:

Want to dive deeper? Click on the premium content below.

You'll get today’s video explainer, plus some super fun LEGO challenges to dive into how diabetes and lactose intolerance shake up our metabolism! We’ve also got classroom topic questions with model answers to help you ace everything from KS3 to GCSE.

Whether they’re into fitness, medicine, or love hands-on learning, this content will help make the science stick.

Chat again soon!

Nici

PS

Got any burning questions about the everyday stuff that makes you go, “huh?”.

Or maybe your kids have hit you with some tricky ones recently?

This week, I got asked, "Why do we have hair?" and "Why don't ducks have eyelashes?". Gotta love it when questions come out loud and proud in public to an audience who then expect a response, and "not now sweetie" doesn't cut it?

Let me know - I’d love to provide answers in future content drops.

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