Electronics with Kids

A hands-on electronics series for a young child and a science-fluent parent, in three themed arcs (first circuits, light & sensing, and electromagnetism), with from-first-principles explainers for the grown-up listed right under the projects they accompany.

Created by Mihkel Kree using Claude. The project plan, all lesson texts, and the explainer chapters were written entirely by Claude (Opus 4.8, with later additions by Fable 5). Mihkel simply built the circuit, took the photo, and put the site together.

• Electronics with a 6-year-old: Read Me First Safety, parts list, and the learning arcs for a hands-on electronics series for a young child, led by a science-fluent parent: a six-project core, a five-project light-sensing arc, three bridge projects, and a five-project electromagnetism arc.

First circuits: the core

Start here, in order, one project per sitting. Each build adds a single idea (the complete loop, the switch, the motor, the capacitor), and the arc caps off with a first chip, which turns the capacitor's timescale into sound (and then into a siren).

• Project 1: Make the Light Come On A child's first circuit: an LED, a resistor, and a battery wired into a loop with alligator clips. Teaches that current flows only when the circuit is complete. ●○○○○ 15–20 min
• Project 2: Press-to-Buzz Doorbell Add a buzzer and a pushbutton to the basic loop to build a working doorbell. Teaches that a switch is a deliberate, controllable gap in the circuit, and introduces series vs. parallel. ●○○○○ 15–20 min
• Project 3: The Spinning Motor Drive a small DC motor straight from the battery and watch a pinwheel spin. Swapping the wires reverses the spin. Teaches that electricity does work and that it has a direction. ●●○○○ 15–20 min
• Project 4: The Light That Fades by Itself Charge a large capacitor, disconnect the battery, and watch an LED fade out slowly instead of snapping off. Teaches energy storage and, for the parent, the RC time constant. ●●●○○ 20–25 min
• Project 5: Steady-Hand Buzz-Wire Game The capstone: bend a wiggly wire track and a loop handle so that touching them completes the circuit and sets off a buzzer and light. Consolidates loop, switch, and buzzer into a toy the child builds and plays. ●●●○○ 25–30 min
• Project 6: Make Your Own Sound (Passive Buzzer Tone Generator) A passive buzzer only clicks on plain DC: it needs a signal that switches on and off thousands of times a second. Build a 555 oscillator to drive it, and a knob to change the pitch. Makes the RC time constant audible. ●●●●○ 25–30 min
  • NE555 Explainer: How a Timer Chip Becomes an Oscillator Explainer · Bachelor-level physics A from-first-principles explainer of the NE555 timer IC for a physicist with no prior electronics/IC training: the internal architecture (divider + two comparators + SR latch + discharge transistor), the three operating modes, and a full derivation of the astable frequency formula f ≈ 1.44/((R1+2R2)C) as an RC relaxation oscillator. Companion to Project 6.
  • Wiring Explainer: From Schematic to Breadboard Explainer · Hands-on, no prerequisites A hands-on bridge for someone who understands the circuit but has never physically built one: how a breadboard is wired inside, how to find pin 1 on a DIP chip, how to identify resistors / ceramic caps / the pot / the buzzer, and a column-by-column build of the Project 6 NE555 oscillator with a debugging checklist. Companion to Project 6.
• Project 6b: The Two-Tone Siren (Nee-Naw with Two 555s) Project 6's oscillator taps thousands of times a second. Build its lazy twin (the same circuit with a capacitor a thousand times bigger) and let it tap the fast chip on the shoulder once a second. The pitch jumps between two notes: a real emergency siren, and a first taste of one circuit commanding another. ●●●●○ 20–25 min
  • Computation Explainer: How Many Transistors Make a Computer? Explainer · Conceptual, no prerequisites A conceptual companion to Project 6b for the parent who asks where the buzzer circuit ends and a real computer begins: Turing's universal machine, the stored-program idea, the historical ladder from the Z3's 2,600 relays and the Manchester Baby's 550 valves to the Intel 4004's 2,300 transistors, and why memory (not logic) is where the billions go.