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Over 1.1 billion simulations delivered

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Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Create sewable circuits with students using felt, LED lights, a battery holder and conductive thread.

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Introduction: Intro to Sewing Circuits for Schools

This guide is focused on helping students who have never sewn learn some hand sewing tips, AND sew their first circuit! With this project, your students will make their learning visible. Plus, it is a really easy project for students new to sewing, but will still appeal to an expert.

You will share a simple circuit template, so students can sew power from a battery to an LED, but also let them add their own artistic flair around the light with fabric paint, markers, embroidery floss, etc.

I like to share embroidery tips in this starter lesson with students and here is a great guide to help you share different types of stitches.

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Supplies

Embroidery Hoops, Fabric (Buy thin white fabric remnants or tea towels), Conductive Thread, Sewable LEDs or 5 mm LEDs, 3D printed battery holders, Conductive Fabric Tape also known as Shielding Fabric Tape

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Step 1: Create Sewable Battery Holders

Since the cheapest coin cell battery holder to buy is two dollars a unit, I decided to make my own battery holder to keep costs low for my sewing circuit club. I found this great tutorial on sewing your own battery holder, but I didn't have any neoprene fabric, so instead I hacked a coincell battery holder in Tinkercad to be sewable.

Hack or print this battery holder designed in Tinkercad. Then use conductive fabric tape to make your positive and negative paths for sewing. Make sure your tape doesn't connect from positive to negative. Run tape from inside the battery holder to the sewable leg for both connections. (You could hack this holder to just use conductive thread by making the hole on the front and back of the holder a little larger and sewing direct pads here.

Test those holders before sewing!

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Step 2: Sew Positive and Sew Negative

Share your own half-baked prototype (in other words, make it functional, but not too pretty.) If needed, share a template for students to follow.

Share with students how to sew from the positive end of the battery to the positive leg of the LED with a running stitch. Make sure they knot and cut their thread after sewing to the LED. Start a new thread to sew from the negative end of the battery holder to the negative leg of the LED.

Let students be creative in sewing with conductive thread! My students made cat patterns, Octopus, and more instead of sewing in a straight line! The important thing is only that the two sewing thread paths do not cross.

Once you've sewn each connection, you've made a simple circuit!

Put in a battery and let there be light!

Here is a downloadable template if you need it.

Sewing Tips:

Test LEDS before sewing!

Conductive thread is sticky, so keep your thread as short as you can.

Make stitches tight to conductive pads, and keep stitches tight but not so tight they pucker the fabric. Loose stitches can cause short circuits.

Any loose thread can short your circuit. Make sure to sew LED on, tie a knot, and cut the thread end close to the knot.

Use a single thread for sewing a running stitch. A double thread might tangle.

If you pull hard, conductive thread can tear!

Attempt to sew the whole positive trace with one thread and the negative trace with one separate thread. You can connect a sewing trace with a new thread, but you run the risk of a loose connection.

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Step 3: Embellish With Embroidery, Markers, Puffy Paint, Etc

Once the circuit is sewn, let students get creative with embellishing and designing art with thread, markers, or puffy paint.

Encourage them to add their own artistic ideas to the fabric! Check out these stitches if you want them to try some other embroidery techniques,
More Resources for sewing circuits/soft circuits:
If you are new to sewing circuits and are looking for more resources, here are a lot of things that guided me along the way.

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Intro to Sewing Circuits for Schools: This guide is focused on helping students who have never sewn learn some hand sewing tips, AND sew their first circuit! With this project, your students will make their learning visible. Plus, it is a really easy project for students new to sewing, ...

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Instructables is committed to helping teachers inspire, engage, and prepare students through hands-on projects to make in the classroom. Always free, and always fun, come explore projects for your next classroom lesson!

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Instructables is committed to helping teachers inspire, engage, and prepare students through hands-on projects to make in the classroom. Always free, and always fun, come explore projects for your next classroom lesson!

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Use homemade conductive and resistant play-doh to build electronic sculptures that light up, move, and make sounds. Anyone who has ever tasted play-doh knows that it's a salty substance. The salt allows electricity to flow through the dough. With the addition of a homemade dough that substitutes sugar for salt, the dough becomes resistive instead, and complex circuits can be created to power all kinds of objects. We use battery packs, LED lights, hobby motors, and buzzers to explore electricity in a fun, hands-on way. We were inspired by this TED talk by AnnMarie Thomas to develop this activity. Check out the video of Squishy Circuits in action in the Tinkering Studio below!

What are the qualities that we value in this activity?

Science and art connections

This activity allows people to spend time modeling the play-doh to create artistic sculptures. It also invites participants to use the material as a purely functional "wire" to conduct the electricity. But when those two combine, people begin to operate in the sweet spot between art, science, and technology.

Materials that invite inquiry

It's hard to think of a material more accessible and inviting than Play-Doh. The tactile pleasure of squishing, molding, and sculpting malleable dough unleashes untapped wells of creativity. The batteries, buzzers, LEDs, and motors are familiar as well, and offer possibilities for building understanding of how electrical connections work.

STEM content is a means, not an end

This activity allows opportunities for exploring series and parallel circuits, polarity, or the creation of complex switches. However these concepts get introduced gradually as the materials invite inquiry into scientific concepts. Resistance may be explored by passing current through a long tube or squeezing the wad of dough hooked up to a motor.

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Use homemade conductive and resistant play-doh to build electronic sculptures that light up, move, and make sounds. Anyone who has ever tasted play-doh knows that it's a salty substance. The salt allows electricity to flow through the dough.

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Search Scratch Projects share by Kathleen Fugle

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Search Scratch Projects share by Kathleen Fugle

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Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

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MaKey MaKey - An Invention Kit for Everyone

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MaKey Makey shared by Cassidy Del Orfano

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MaKey Makey shared by Cassidy Del Orfano

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Makey Makey: An Invention Kit for Everyone. Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip to start inventing the future.

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Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

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Download the Guide (PDF)
What's a circuit?

A flashlight. An electric toothbrush. A TV remote control.

All of these devices run on electricity. In order to power them, electricity needs to travel from one side of a power source and return to the opposite side along an unbroken path. This path, or circle of electricity, is called a circuit. In the case of a battery, electricity travels from the negative (-) end and returns to the positive (+) end.

Even as electrical systems have become increasingly complex over the years, the basic building blocks of a circuit have stayed consistent:

Circuit kits - connectable tiles that teach the basics of circuitry - have been in schools for decades.

The Guide

This guide will help you create a DIY circuit kit that allows you to create some of the basic tiles found in many of these commercially available circuit kits:

Power tiles contain batteries. Do not plug into a wall outlet!

Input tiles contain switches or sensors.

Output tiles contain lights, speakers, or motors.

This Guide will help you learn and teach the basics of circuitry. Through a series of challenges, you will connect tiles to make your first circuit, build new tiles, and then dive deeper into creating more complex circuits, games, and eventually integrate these tools into diverse classroom projects. While this guide is designed for teachers to learn about circuits at Edcamps and during other professional development opportunities, many of these challenges can be offered directly to students.

Table of Contents
As you make your cardboard circuits, share your work with the hashtag #MakerPromise. Next: Challenge #1

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Download the Guide (PDF) A flashlight. An electric toothbrush. A TV remote control. All of these devices run on electricity. In order to power them, electricity needs to travel from one side of a power source and return to the opposite side along an unbroken path.

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Bottle Biology, an instructional materials development program, was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation administered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.