plant cell model

[mimsum]

ds has just told me he needs to make a 3D model of a plant cell for science homework. Because of various things happening this weekend the only time he'll have to do it is tomorrow morning and I'm housebound following recent surgery so it can't involve anything which will need a shopping trip. Any ideas as to how can he do this simply and effectively and with the minimum of input from me? thanks

Play dough. Fantastic stuff! Comes in all sorts of colours aswell. Marvelous!

Tupperware box and a balloon ? If no balloon, then a plastic ball instead to be the nucleus

Am thinking a sponge to go in the box around the balloon might be good for the bit around the nucleus?

how old is your ds? What level of detail are we talking? Mitochondria and chloroplasts or just the very basics?

Make a pizza

Important features of a plant cell as opposed to an animal cell are the cell wall and the chloroplasts, so I think you should include those. Tupperware box is a good wall. plastic bag would make the cell membrane just inside the wall. Nucleus - some sort of ball. Chloroplasts - erm, what have you got around? Ought to be green and small in comparison with the nucleus.

Use Brussel sprouts for the chloroplasts. Got to be a more useful thing to do with them than eating the revolting things. (Er... has the sprout season finished?) I'm sure my children will get this homework sometime so will squirrel these suggestions away in the Good Ideas bit of my brain!

ooh thanks

he's y7 so i'm assuming he needs a fair amount of detail

we have a spare takeaway container, plastic bags, playdough and plasticine so hopefully he can rustle up something suitable

pizza idea is good, scienceteacher, but would never survive the journey to school ....

ds did this last year we used a shoe bx, a smaller tupperware container with lid, sponges painted and cut different colours

Didn't Martianbishop have some good suggestions for this once? Was there a recipe for making cells out of jelly or something? Might be worth searching through her old posts.

instructions for making model of a plant cell
This post: Martianbishop Wed 01-Oct-08 18:31:01