10 Hands-On Ways to Learn About Electricity at Home

Published:
December 16, 2021

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Contributor:
KiwiCo

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What if you could toss the textbooks and help your kids learn about electricity at home with hands-on activities? Check out these ten fun ideas for your homeschool. There’s something here for every age and most of these ideas would be great to do together with multiple ages.

learn about electricity

Learn About Electricity with Batteries

Your budding scientists will love learning about how batteries work without actually using a battery! Instead, they’ll make a battery using pennies, felt, and a salt water solution. Don’t worry if this seems too technical. If you follow the Penny Battery tutorial from KiwiCo, you’ll have all the information you need. They even give you insight into what’s happening with the chemical reactions you try.

Take the battery idea a step further and show your kids how to complete an LED circuit using a graphite pencil. Not only will your kids learn about the conductive properties of graphite, but they’ll be entertained as well. In this fun Graphite Circuit project, any design will do – so have fun with it!

learning about electricity experiment activity

Whether you use a pumpkin or a lemon, you can make your own battery. Both lemons and pumpkins are acidic, so they’re prime candidates for transporting electrical energy. Follow the complete Pumpkin Power tutorial and see how many volts your battery can produce!

Watching Electricity in Action

Once your kids have learned about batteries and electricity, take it a step further to create motor-powered bots. This fun project recycles bottle caps into little robots. All you need is a small vibration motor and a coin cell battery along with a few other items you likely have on hand. This Bottle Cap Bots project is great for kids 9+ and will only take about 30 minutes to build.

What if your kids can learn about electricity by making LED Magnets? This project might take a bit longer as you wait for the hot glue to dry, but even kids as young as five will love this one!

Even if it’s not camping season where you live, your kids will love making these Water Bottle Lanterns. Make a pillow fort in the living room if you have to! This is an easy and fun project for kids of all ages.

Your kids can experiment with how electricity and magnetism are related by creating an Electromagnetic Train. Again, don’t worry if you don’t understand the science behind it all – if you follow this simple tutorial, you’ll also find an explanation in layman’s terms. Seriously, the best part of homeschooling is learning right alongside your kids, correct?

electromagnetic train

Learn About Electricity with Creative Projects

Do you have a bunch of pencils without erasers that you can repurpose? Of course you do! Now your kids ages nine and older can use them to create a Light-up Heart Flower Pencil. Other than a pencil, you’ll need a few items like a coin cell battery, LED light, and copper tape. But if you follow the tutorial from KiwiCo, your kids can create this fun pencil in under an hour and learn about electricity at the same time. Your creative and crafty kids will love that aspect of this project too.

light-up heart flower

If you have a few hours for some hands-on science, then your kids from nine all the way up to sixteen will love learning about electricity with the Copper Plated Coins project. They’ll be able to use electrolysis to put copper into a solution. Then, using electroplating, they can see the copper come out of the solution and stick to another piece of metal. Not sure you can explain the science behind it? Don’t worry! This complete tutorial from KiwiCo will walk you through the steps and scientific analysis.

It might not be Valentine’s Day quite yet, but you can get a head start with this Light-Up Valentine project. Your kids will learn about conduction of electricity using conductive paint!