Electric Play Dough

Overview

If you love doing arts and crafts with your students, this lesson plan is for you! Teach them about energy, electricity, and circuits as they build light-up sculptures, using something they are all familiar with—play dough! Clear step-by-step instructions are provided and no previous experience with circuits is required.

NGSS Alignment

This lesson helps students prepare for these Next Generation Science Standards Performance Expectations:

• 4-PS3-2. Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.

This lesson focuses on these aspects of NGSS Three Dimensional Learning:

Science & Engineering Practices	Disciplinary Core Ideas	Crosscutting Concepts
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations. Make observations to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence for an explanation of a phenomenon or test a design solution.	PS3.A: Definitions of Energy. Energy can be moved from place to place by moving objects or through sound, light, or electric currents. PS3.B: Conservation of Energy and Energy Transfer. Energy can also be transferred from place to place by electric currents, which can then be used locally to produce motion, sound, heat, or light. The currents may have been produced to begin with by transforming the energy of motion into electrical energy.	Energy and Matter. Energy can be transferred in various ways and between objects.

Materials

For each group of students you will need:

• Electric Play Dough Kit available for purchase from our partner Home Science Tools. Includes:
  • 4xAA battery holder
  • Piezoelectric buzzer
  • Jumbo LEDs (25 total — 5 each in red, green, white, yellow, and blue)
  • White insulating dough (3.5 oz)
  • Red, blue, and green conductive dough (3.5 oz each)
• AA batteries (4, not included in the kit).
• Optional: in addition to the dough included in the kit, you can make your own conductive and insulating dough (for example, if you want other colors). See Electric Play Dough Recipes for materials and directions for making your own dough. You can also use store-bought Play-Doh® (replaces conductive dough) and modeling clay (replaces insulating dough).