Play dough traffic lights

Electric play dough has become a regular activity this week, and when the friend who originally suggested we try it was visiting, he had to have another go!  She also had to endure being 'shown' how red cabbage indicator works (she's a secondary science teacher...) and pointed in the direction of penguins and polar bears.  If you read this, thank you, and I'm sorry!

Anyway, whilst playing with the LEDs and play dough, she helped the small boy to make some traffic lights, with a spoon to switch between red, amber (well, yellow, with a bit of added imagination) and green.  This was popular with the boy, and the collection of his vehicles that were driven around the table increased with each cycle of the traffic lights... It was a nice circuit, and with careful positioning of the spoon, you could also make the amber and red light together to show the lights were about to turn green. 

Play dough traffic lights

When he got bored of the traffic lights, we also added some lights to his dumper truck, with the battery carried in the back, and it was driven around for a bit, although the play dough didn't stick brilliantly and it disassembled itself a few times.

Lights on dumper truck

We've had a lot of fun with the play dough, battery and LEDs this week, and I suspect we will be doing this again many times.  It's surprisingly not too tricky for clumsy not-quite-3-year old hands, and there's quite a variety of circuit that you can make when you build in some basic switches (with cutlery!) too.