Electrifying Circuits

We've been studying energy.  One of our standards is that the flow of electricity requires a closed circuit.  Students learned about the difference between conductors and insulators.  Then they started to put it into action.

Over the years the materials that I use to teach these standards has sort of evolved.  Initially I had about 3 wires a few tiny light bulbs and some batteries.  The materials would sort of be passed around the room and we'd move on.  I think we even threw in a few switches with metal brads and paper clips on an index card.  Not super memorable.

Being fortunate that I get to focus mainly on teaching science my collection of materials for this unit has multiplied.  I had an epiphany at some point (whether it was my own or stolen from another educator I don't even remember) that I could use Christmas lights and my materials for this unit quadrupled. 

Now cutting apart strings of Christmas lights in NOT easy on the hands, a good pair of scissors will get you started.  Cut one of the strings, there are usually three twisted together, and start snipping close to the bulb.  Keep in mind that you need enough wire on either side of the bulb to have material to work with.  Sometime I would sacrifice one or two bulbs in each string to ensure I had enough length on either side of the light.  Once your bits are cut to the length you want, time to pull out the wire cutters.  The plastic coating at the end of the wire needs to be striped so you have something to connect the wires to.  This is a pain.  This is time consuming.  If you are not careful you might lose some of that much needed length.

Anyway, I cut apart Christmas lights and striped the ends of the wires.  I cut the leftover wire to different lengths.  This gave me a lot of materials.  We were able to do a LOT of lessons with this.  We investigated how many lights you could light with one battery.  What happens when you add more than one battery?  How many lights could you string together.  What's the difference between series and parallel circuits.

So at some point those little tiny bulbs that I started with either disappeared or stopped working.  Even though I had my Christmas lights I knew the lesson with the one bulb, one battery, one wire was golden and I had to get more bulbs.  I could not find those bulbs in the store, if I could I probably would have stopped there and not needed any more supplies.  I couldn't so I ended up on Amazon.

On Amazon you don't realize all the things that you need until you start looking.  So I found my bulbs on Amazon, and all the other electricity kits as well.  I bought wires with alligator clips, battery cases, light bulb bases, switches, and more that I'm probably forgetting. I went a little overboard, but my students are worth it.

While my materials worked just fine, these new materials brought in some fun new twists to our challenges.  Students were and are able to build more complicated circuits because the wires stay better.  The connections and contacts are more secure and make for better wow moments when they light their bulbs.  I had to get more wires with the clips because they were just easier to work with.

I went a little wild and bought several box kits too.  These come with directions and their own challenges.  Honestly I'm not as fond of these, they're a little to clean and simple.  The roughness of my hodgepodge materials leads to more honest discovery.


That being said, I am beyond thrilled to try out the new kits that we got through a donor's chose project.  My class now has a Makey Makey and a Littlebits circuit kit.  These will be used soon and I can't wait to see how the students react to these cool, more advanced circuit activities.