This is a great way to explain the basic concepts of what nerves are and what they do. You'll be getting the kids to make a simple neuron from different coloured pipe cleaners. Each colour will represent a different part of the neuron e.g. cell body, axon, dendrites, myelin sheath!

1. Take one pipe cleaner and roll it into a ball. This is will be the cell body.
2.Take another pipe cleaner and attach it to the new "cell body" by pushing it through the ball so there are two halves sticking out. Take the two halves and twist them together into a single extension. This will be the axon.
3.Take other pipe cleaners and push them through the "cell body" on the side opposite the axon. These are dendrites. These can be shorter than your axon and you can twist more pipe cleaners to make more dendrites.
4.Wrap small individual pipe cleaners along the length of the axon. These will represent the myelin sheath.
5. Wrap another pipe cleaner on the end of the axon. This will be the synaptic terminal.

Background information about neurones:

Neurones (also called neurons or nerve cells are electrically excitable cells that process and transmit information by electrochemical signaling, via synapses (connections) with )other cells. Neurons are the core components of the nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord. A number of specialized types of neurons exist: sensory neurons respond to touch, sound, light and numerous other stimuli. Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause e.g. muscle contractions.

A typical neurone consists of 3 parts: the cell body (soma), dendrites and the axon. The nucleus ('control centre of the cell' as it's described in schools) is located in the cell body. Dendrites are lots of branches from the cell body that receive signals from other neurones. The axon is very thin and conducts electrical impulses away from the cell body, towards the axon termini where the neurone forms synapses with other neurones. The longest axons in the human body are of the sciatic nerve which runs from the base of the spine to the big toe of each foot! These single cells can be more than a metre long!

In vertebrates, the axon is insulated by a sheath of myelin, formed from Schwann cells. Loss of myelin from axons is found in people with multiple sclerosis. Along myelinated nerve fibers, gaps (approx a micrometre long) in the sheath known as nodes of Ranvier occur at evenly-spaced intervals (action potentials jump between these sites where ion channels are found in a manner known as saltatory conduction, but this is probably way above the heads of the majority of your audience for this experiment!).