When it comes to Squishy Circuits, you can try, but you probably will not be able to find an EdTech kit better catered to easy-going, open-ended play! Each of the three Squishy Circuits kits (Lite, Standard and Deluxe) encourage children as young as 8 years old to roll up their proverbial sleeves and start building. With something for everyone at all age levels from Grades 2-5, Squishy Circuits helps children grasp the basics of electrical circuits in fun, hands-on and creative ways with captivating, attention-keeping conductive Play Doh.
Each kit is great for early education and comes with an appropriate amount of trinkets and tools, including, in the Deluxe Kit, 40 LEDs, insulating dough, conductive dough, a rolling pin, mechanical buzzer and a motor with a fan blade. Just use your imagination to dream up something you can sculpt using one or both kinds of dough and attach the wires strategically to make your projects light up! Squishy Circuits are an invaluable 21st century learning tool that help catalyze student creativity and supercharge an authentic understanding of the way that real-world circuits are constructed as well as how they work.
It really is amazing how simple it is to use Squishy Circuits. The dough feels exactly like Play Doh only it can be used to create a circuit. For example, the guide that comes in the kit offers some basic experiments to help kids get started (and I even used it to help make my circuit). The step-by-step directions couldn't get any easier and, honestly, neither could the construction. To make an LED light up, all you need is two different colors of conductive dough, the battery pack and one LED. Squishy Circuits even provides students with DIY conductive dough materials and instructions so that they could make it themselves, but I decided to save that endeavor for another time.
My quick little experiment illustrated the principles of circuitry perfectly! Since both doughs are conductive, the current was able to pass from the battery pack through the dough and light up the LED. Once I pushed the two doughs together, however, it created a short circuit, as you can see in the bottom picture, and caused the LED to lose its spark.
Squishy Circuits are ideal for helping young kids break down the basic tenets of electronics and circuitry by learning with their hands and completing simple but powerful experiments just like this one! It's the perfect way to expose kids to exploration-based learning and mold future-ready problem solvers in a flash! Click below to add some Squishy Circuits to your makerspace or classroom!
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