Conduct Dough Lights

Learning about electrical circuits could not be easier. The child uses conductive (colored) dough as the "wires" and inserts LEDs with chubby contact points into the dough. Put two separate pieces of dough on the 9-volt battery-powered work table, poke the red wire lead into one piece of dough, the black wire lead into the other piece, and stick an LED so that the contact points touch both pieces of dough, and the LED lights up, showing that the circuit is complete. After covering these basics, other experiments are done using guide cards that fit into a recessed area under a clear plastic cover. The cute guide cards show exactly where to place the red, blue and yellow conductive dough, the white non-conductive dough, the wire leads, and up to four red and four yellow LEDs. Concepts covered include + and -, conductive and non-conductive, and series and parallel connections, all just by playing with dough!