[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Great maker projects for 8th grade kids and ...
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Ask HN: Great maker projects for 8th grade kids and above?
As a father of a 13-year-old kid, I tried to do my best to initiate
him to different aspects of life. It could be watching a
documentary about black holes, building coffee table or just
enjoying a simple walk in nature. I asked to some friends if they
have great project idea that could be done by an 8th grade kid with
or without support. I personally like to do it with him as it is a
privileged time to build something together (for me) and learn new
skills (for him). The purpose of this thread is to assemble some
ideas for Christmas presents. I'm starting... 1. DIY LED
Christmas tree kit for soldering (https://www.az-
delivery.de/en/products/diy-weihnachtsbaum-kit-alles-inklusive-
versandkostenfrei) 2. Software Defined Radios kit
(https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/ and
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CD7558GT) 3. DIY Internet Radio Alarm
clock with touch screen control (https://www.az-
delivery.de/en/products/radiowecker-mit-dem-az-touch) Any other
ideas or suggestions?
Author : ostaquet
Score : 21 points
Date : 2024-11-17 10:36 UTC (4 days ago)
| brudgers wrote:
| Modular synthesizer.
|
| 8th graders need to make noise.
|
| Good luck.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Perhaps it's too simple, but I like
| https://elenco.com/snapcircuits/
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Second this. My daughter is in 3rd grade and loves these.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| My kiddo has a couple of those, and I'm still in two minds
| about some of the choices that they provide in those kits.
|
| It feels a little like "Follow these instructions exactly"
| without requiring understanding in a lot of cases. For example,
| the music IC doesn't have any of it's terminals labelled.
|
| The same with the transistor; it doesn't seem to explain
| exactly why you'd need to use it, why you'd need a resistor on
| the base, etc. On that note, It's also possible to potentially
| damage stuff if you just try to experiment without
| understanding.
|
| I feel like they could have made some of the parts a bit more
| flexible -- have current limiting resistors built into the LED
| & transistor units for example, provide point-to-point wires
| rather than rigid 1/2/3 unit connectors, etc etc.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I'm a really big fan of the more modern way of doing things.
|
| A lot of old school maker projects are fun, but they're also
| basically E waste making kits now that phones do almost
| everything.
|
| Not having a bunch of low tech gadgets laying around is really
| nice, they can easily become the biggest clutter challenge in a
| space, the same way paper used to back when more people still
| used it for things other than books.
|
| Building a small solar energy system is fun and easy, and also
| practical.
|
| 3D printing is fantastic.
|
| Meshtastic has a lot of DIY and learning potential and is like
| the lite edition of ham radio. What's really cool is that range
| testing gets you outside.
|
| Maybe design something together with JLCPCB and have it
| made(Leave off any through hole connectors and solder them
| yourself for both fun and pretty decent cost savings).
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Any solar energy kit you would recommend for a hobbyist without
| breaking the bank?
| eternityforest wrote:
| The prices change every 5 minutes for sales and such, but
| there's generally always a ton of 50 cents a watt solar
| panels on Amazon.
|
| Permanent installs that work unattended are slightly scary
| and have to be done right so something doesn't leak or start
| a fire, but the portable folding panels are usually similarly
| cheap.
|
| You could get one of those plus a charge controller and
| LiFePo4 for not too much.
|
| Everything still needs to be done carefully though, and
| unfortunately almost all cheap charge controllers have a ton
| of idle power draw, they're kinda crappy compared to the tech
| built into a random cheap solar generator, I don't think you
| can make anything as nice as a commercial generator for
| cheap.
|
| Most the DIY education kits for kids type stuff seem pretty
| crappy too.
|
| An ESP32 module with onboard lithium charging plus a USB-C
| folding panel has a lot of possibilities though, if you have
| any projects ideas that could be done with such things.
| incognito124 wrote:
| Take a look at what these guys do:
|
| https://circuitmess.com/
| zachlatta wrote:
| If he likes video games, we're hosting a big game jam for middle
| and high schoolers next weekend.
|
| It's free and nonprofit. There are 60 locations. Maybe one is
| near you?
|
| https://counterspell.hackclub.com/
| mikewarot wrote:
| GNU radio is an awesome signal processing toolkit. You can use it
| to take signals from a cheap RTLsdr, or even a microphone, and
| make new virtual instruments, radios, etc. Long ago I was
| interested in aircraft navigation aids, and was able to throw
| together a receiver for the local VOR transmitter, which showed
| me on screen where I was relative to the transmitter.
|
| You could build a sonar system, listen to ultrasound, or almost
| anything you can imagine, thanks to Moore's law and the massive
| amount of compute we have these days.
| a-saleh wrote:
| 13 year old can do almost anything. Only problem is ... scope, I
| guess?
|
| Like, I was making games in Visual Basic. Made a little Tyrian
| clone. It had total of two levels :D
| frostburg wrote:
| Custom handwired (maybe with amoeba pcbs to help) keyboard, there
| are a lot of designs out there.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I loved doing chemistry experiments and demos at home as a kid. I
| had books like the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments [1] but
| this is a modern guide that I would gladly recommend:
|
| Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No
| Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Guide-Home-Chemistry-Expe...
|
| [1]
| https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/Brent_GBC.p...
| radicalbyte wrote:
| BBC Microbit project kit. Awesome stuff. It's used in secondary
| schools here in NL to teach kids CDT.
| joebergeron wrote:
| My father is an electrical engineer. Growing up, he had countless
| components in the basement, including a whole slew of 7400-series
| DIP chips, as well as a bunch of (powered) breadboards and spare
| wire. In highschool I had so so much fun building things from
| scratch - I recall building a basic adder by drawing out the
| truth tables and doing boolean algebra to come up with the
| circuit diagram, eventually evolving it into a more fully-fledged
| calculator. It felt (and still feels) like magic! Most of it was
| self-directed, though I certainly got his help in a lot of
| places.
|
| I think sort of "choose your own adventure" projects like that
| are great, and they also force you to really understand
| everything you're doing. You can also scale the scope of the
| "project" to whatever you want; it can even be a sort of
| iterative process. More importantly (imo) you're left with a
| bunch of components that he can tinker around with endlessly :)
| LVB wrote:
| I so miss the basements of my midwest youth and early
| adulthood. They were _the_ place for projects. I built so much.
| My west coast home since 2010 doesn 't have a basement, and
| we've not much interior space for projects (esp when you're
| talking construction, tools, soldering and such). My spouse is
| stickler about the inside staying nice, too. The garage is the
| alternative, but it's so inferior. There's a car there, it's
| cold, etc. Oh for a basement...
| davewasthere wrote:
| Not quite the same, but if you've a leaf blower, then making a
| hovercraft with a couple of pool noodles and a circular piece of
| plywood is pretty cool (and a lot of fun).
| conductr wrote:
| 8th grade is old enough to do just about anything. I like to do
| big memorable projects with my kid where we both have to learn
| some things along the way. I'd build a go kart at this age, or
| some other electric motor driven vehicle. I'd think it would span
| a few months depending on time dedicated. And covers mechanical,
| fabrication, components and even some programming if you want to
| tune it yourself.
|
| Also, I like to reinforce the concept of "dreaming it up", tell
| my kids to think of a thing to make and we break down the steps
| we think are needed to build it. At first, it's like their
| imagination wasn't big enough. They'd have an idea and I'd show
| them how we could build it pretty easily. Now, it's gotten to
| where they know the skies the limit and anything of kind of
| possible so they start big and then work their way back down to a
| realistic scope of features. All to say, ask your kid what they
| want to build!
| coreyp_1 wrote:
| If I had kids, I would probably subscribe to KiwiCo
| (https://www.kiwico.com/us/store/cp/12-plus-years-old).
|
| Lego?
|
| Unfortunately, my limited (geographically-constrained) contact
| with my nieces and nephews has severely impacted my ability to
| influence them towards technology. :(
|
| Exposure is one thing that is helpful, but in the end, you have
| to find something that your son is so enthralled with that he
| wants to pursue it on his own. It begins with curiosity about
| something, of course, but ultimately requires him to develop the
| skills and then the confidence to where he wants to begin doing
| things on his own.
|
| The problem is in the things that parents subject their children
| to that actually drive the children away from those things...
| like piano lessons! (I say this as a pianist that has taught many
| children over the years, and it's obvious which kids are being
| forced.)
|
| What does he like to do?
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Buy a Bambu Lab A1 Mini 3D printer. They're amazing. Then look at
| examples of what you can do on Youtube. Amazing! Kids nowadays
| have it so good.
| bainganbharta wrote:
| Sometimes a 13 year old kid just wants to be a kid. I know
| because I was robbed of that, thanks to the adults in my life
| growing up. Let your kid discover whatever it is that they are
| into, on their own.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Are you saying just let them figure it out on their own?
|
| I prefer to give my kids opportunities in things they wouldn't
| otherwise have known about, or had the resources to discover.
| They can then decide if thats something they want to go deeper
| on.
|
| This notion of "let kids be kids" minimizes their development
| needs and exposure to important learning experiences.
| Cerium wrote:
| Around that age I built a trebuchet. Did calculations, got some
| plywood and building lumber, etc. Had a lot of fun chucking water
| balloons down a hill.
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