Last nine weeks, I co-taught an Electronics class for our 7th grade elective. I say “co-taught” even though my colleague, Kat Sauter, actually did nearly all of the planning and teaching – and I learned nearly as much as the students. One of the projects that the students did was to take apart old battery-operated toys to identify the different electronic parts. After dissecting the toys and making posters that illustrated diagrams of the inner workings, the students could make new toys using the parts and any of the tools we had in Zorro Astuto. This group was particularly proud of the musical toy they transformed into a UFO, complete with 3d printed alien pilot, laser cut acrylic laser beam, and very confused 3d printed cow.
One of the resources Kat used for ideas was this “Toy Take Apart” project from the Exploratorium. You can find some more ideas in this article from User Generated Education. You can also see some other fun examples by looking at #toydissection on Twitter.
