Circuit boards are one of my favorite tools for tinkering, but the alligator wires that connect the boards are really finicky and hard for little hands to use. Makey Makey came up with a hack using clothespins and conductive tape that is pretty ingenious, and works for bigger kids. Clothespins are tricky for preschoolers, though, and I knew there had to be another way!
While trying to wrangle my toddler’s hair out of her face, I realized the answer was right in front of me. Toddler hair clips look an awful lot like alligator leads, but they’re a lot easier to open. I soldered on some wires and epoxied buttons to the clips to make them easier to get a grip on, and the toddler-friendly alligator leads were ready to test.
Like most preschoolers, my three year old loves making up stories, so the alligator clips are naturally alligators, and the buttons are fancy hats. With a little help, she discovered that if she pushed on the alligators fancy hat, their mouth opened, and then they could bite onto one of the nails on the circuit boards. To help her figure out how to connect the alligator wires, I showed her how to arrange the circuit boards into a circle, with a motor and a battery pack. I also borrowed a song that a lot of preschools use to gather the kids for story time, and we sang “come and make a circle, it’s circuit time now”. We made circuits together a few times, and soon she was able to experiment on her own. She tried out lots of different motors and toy mechanisms, and these little alligator clips enabled her to be in charge of her experimentation. You can see in the video below that she is able to use them without any help, which was amazing.
I am trying these little alligator clips out with a larger group of preschoolers later this week. I’m curious to find out if they work for other kids, and if they do I can’t wait to see what explorations they facilitate.
