Circuits with Makey, Makey

Working with circuits in STEAM starts in Kindergarten, using easy-to-use-materials to create circuits that move, light up, and sound off. We use LittleBits, Circuit Cubes, and Squishy Circuits. Students in 4th and 5th grade also create circuits with foil and/or copper tape. We recently added Makey Makey sets to our STEAM room and created banana pianos.

Click the download arrow below to access the Makey Makey Challenge files:

• Slide Deck
• Pictures and Videos

A few tips and recommendations for this activity:

• Ask your families to send in bananas. Have each class’ bananas arrive a day or two before class.

• Put a rolling cart outside your classroom door for banana drop offs, with a sign on it that says, “Bananas Go Here” to let students know where they go, and to also get staff members interested in what’s happening in STEAM this week!

• Model making the banana piano for Kindergarten. Then allow them to come up table by table to use the piano while the others do an alternate activity or Free Choice. For First Grade – model using the document camera then let them create as table partners. All other grades (Second – Fifth) can have less direct instruction and more exploratory/investigation as they they create.

• Add the link to the banana piano to each grade level’s Google Classroom.