Unit Plan
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The Blobz Guide to Electric Circuits

For Students 3rd - 8th
An exciting interactive site of games, activities, information, and quizzes about electric circuits. You'll learn what makes circuits work, all about conductors and insulators, switches, changing circuits, and circuit diagrams. Learning...
Activity
Museum of Science

Museum of Science and Industry: Online Science: Make a Circuit Board

For Students 3rd - 8th
Step-by-step illustrated instructions showing how to build a circuit board using everyday materials.
Activity
Technovation

Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Engineer an Electric Switch

For Students Pre-K - 1st
Using your knowledge of the flow of electricity, do you think you could build a switch that can complete a circuit to turn on an LED? This site contains the challenge, tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Completing the Circuit

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
In the everyday electrical devices we use - calculators, remote controls and cell phones - a voltage source such as a battery is required to close the circuit and operate the device. In this hands-on activity, students use a battery,...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Put a Spark in It! Electricity

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Uncountable times every day "with the merest flick of a finger"each one of us calls on electricity to do our bidding. What would your life be like without electricity? Students begin learning about electricity with an introduction to the...
Activity
PBS

Pbs Kids:activities and Videos: Electricity

For Students 3rd - 8th
This PBS site offers videos and activities are hands-on challenges that focus on the engineering design process. They use simple materials, allow for multiple solutions, and are ideal for ages 9-12.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Switcheroo

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
In this hands-on activity, students construct a simple switch and determine what objects and what types of materials can be used to close a switch in a circuit and light a light bulb.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Dance Pad Mania (Pdf) [Pdf]

For Students 3rd - 8th
Hands-on challenge to build a dance pad that lets you use your feet to either flash a light or to sound a buzzer. Provides full list of materials with ideas on how to design, build, test, and redesign the pad if necessary. Activity...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Hands on Activity: Designing a Thermostat

For Teachers 9th - 10th
By building a basic thermostat, students will explore basic circuitry and electricity. The thermostat built out of a breadboard, temperature sensor chip, amplifier, and battery creates a linear relationship between temperature of the...
Lesson Plan
Discovery Education

Discovery Education: Earth's Energy

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
A hands-on lesson for helping students understand simple circuits, series circuits, and parallel circuits, and the differences between the three.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Bulbs & Batteries Side by Side

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
We are surrounded everyday by circuits that utilize "in parallel" and "in series" circuitry. Complicated circuits designed by engineers are made of many simpler parallel and series circuits. In this hands-on activity, students build...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Light Your Way

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
When there is a power failure, or when we go outside at night, we grab a flashlight so we can find our way. What happens inside a flashlight that makes the bulb light up? Why do we need a switch to turn on a flashlight? Have you ever...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: The Power of Food

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students imagine they are stranded on an island and must create the brightest light possible with the meager supplies they have on hand in order to gain the attention of a rescue airplane.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Two Cell Battery

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
In this hands-on activity, students build their own two-cell battery. They also determine which electrolyte solution is best suited for making a battery.
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Go With the Flow

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students gain an understanding of the difference between electrical conductors and insulators, and experience recognizing a conductor by its material properties. In a hands-on activity, students build a conductivity tester to determine...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Energy

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Through nine lessons, students are introduced to a range of energy types--electrical, light, sound and thermal-as well as the renewable energy sources of wind, hydro (water) and solar power. Subjects range from understanding that the...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Photovoltaic Efficiency

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Through a series of four lessons, students are introduced to many factors that affect the power output of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. Factors such as the angle of the sun, temperature of the panels, specific circuit characteristics,...