If you are looking for a fun indoor activity, I highly recommend making your own "Squishy Circuits". The conductive and insulating dough's were developed by AnnMarie Thomas et. al. at the University of St. Thomas. YOU AND YOUR KIDS CAN DO THIS! Snag a buzzer and a variety pack of led's from Radio Shack and harvest a small motor from a broken toy or toothbrush. The rest of the ingredients are likely already in your kitchen.
(This just in ... Check out Squishy Circuits + littleBits on my next post!)
Before I exposed our #FreshAirFund visitor, Rohan, to more complicated circuits, I gave him the how to instructions for making squishy circuits. We used lemon juice for the conductive dough and sugar for the insulating dough. It was a PERFECT warm up to using electronics and exercised his following instructions "muscle". Here he is cooking the green conductive dough - he had to stir continuously!
Here he is pushing various led's into the dough. We used led's, buzzers, and a motor that Rohan smashed free from an old toothbrush. He said he felt like he was conducting experiments like a real scientist, and he told me he would like to either be a teacher or a scientist.
They say squishy circuits dough can last in the refrigerator for weeks, so we kept in in there for a few days and then took our dough on the road. Some moms and dads in my town let me spread the love with their kids. There was lots of learning going on! Polarity! Buzzing! Tasting! (not tasty, btw)...
After a complete clean up of place mats and hands, we did lots more cause and effect learning with littleBits. YAY littleBits!
To prepare for these lessons with Rohan and a subsequent workshop I did with 7 children from ages 6 to 9, I relied especially on this video demonstration by AnnMarie Thomas:
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