Knee Deep in Mitochondria!

 Today was Sunday. I was meandering my way happily through God’s day of rest, ate a leisurely breakfast, did a tiny bit of housework, was about to wash the car when my daughter reliably informed me that she had a science project to finish for tomorrow. 

Mild panic set in but I reassured her that she still had the rest of the day to finish it if she got started now. 

No. 

It wasn’t a simple case of googling a few science topics and putting it into your own words… 

What’s it on? 

Animal cells. Shouldn’t be too tough… 

You have to make it. 

What? 

You have to make it! 

These words may as well have come from Mars and smashed me in between the eyes in a bolt of blue! 

Not a making project. The mother of all fear and panic. 

Some furious googling did actually occur, but that was done by my wife and I frantically scouring the web hoping to find an easy project to copy. Er, I meant for inspiration. This was not going to be a walk in the park that was for definite. The only models I found looked like they’d had a whole design and build team dedicated to them. 

Foam balls! Came an excited voice. 

What? 

Foam balls! You must have a foam ball! 

It was my wife thinking she’d cracked the code. Sadly I did not have a foam ball- whatever use they’d be anyway- as finally I found a reasonably achievable design that we could definitely achieve. Still the panic remained as the video reeled off all of the equipment you’d need. Who on Earth has a craft knife? I didn’t even know they were a thing! 

A trip to the supermarket beckoned. My craft supplies were dwindling low- so we purchased a stapler, cocktail sticks, glue, card, pens and a whole manner of exciting things including a craft knife! 

Stapling, cutting, colouring, designing, measuring, gluing, copying from googling, checking spelling, checking cutting all went on over the next couple of hours as slowly but surely the cell began to take shape. A nucleus was followed by mitochondria which was followed by the membrane which was followed by a little bit that I’ve forgotten the name of- only I remember it resembled tiny bacon… we glued and measured, cut and stapled and eventually it was done! 

For all of my moaning and panic, we did manage to make the animal cell and to be honest it was actually quite good fun. Plus it allowed my daughter and I to share some important productive time together- which is worth the world. Even more priceless was the proud look on her face once we’d completed it! 

What’s the moral here then? I usually say ‘look before you leap’ and consider all of the angles before you start something, but this has only led to worry and panic. Maybe jump in with both feet and enjoy life should be my mantra going forward- we did really enjoy the crafty science project, and it gave us far more beside- even if we were knee deep in mitochondria! I actually want more sciencey arty crafty makingy projects now. It will give me another excuse to use my craft knife…