Press Here: Simple Circuits with Kindergarten

I've fallen a little behind in my blogging at the start of this school year but I'm committed to sharing more and adding to the blog! Here is my first post for the 2018-2019 school year!

I love the book Press Here by Herve Tullet. It is a wonderful interactive book to read to preschool and kindergarten students. As they read the book, press the different “buttons” and have the next page change it is almost like magic. Over the years the book has become very popular and many of my students have read the book multiple times and have it in their collections at home. This year, I wanted to come up with a plan that added a project or maker connection to the book and the Little Bits simple circuits and button pieces were a perfect fit!

I started by reading the book with my students. I love sharing this book and although many of the students have read the book before they were excited to hear and share the book again. For the first step, students created their own books inspired Press Here books. Using paper folded, students thought about different pages from Press Here and then drew dots on the first page and the action event on the next page. Kindergarteners had so much fun planning, drawing and then sharing their books with their classmates and teachers. They were also excited to take the books home and share them with their families.

The next step was introducing students to the Little Bits circuits (https://littlebits.com/) Little Bits are a great maker tool to use with young students. The circuits are magnetic and color coded so students know how to connect them correctly and in what order. They snap together when lined up correctly. Kindergarteners made connections with the imaginary world of the Press Here book and creating their own press here buttons that did make things move, light up or make sounds. Students worked in small groups to connect the pieces, decide on what they wanted their buttons to do and then adding the red, yellow and blue paper buttons on tops of the different Little Bits circuits. They had a great time testing out different pieces, Little Bits and configurations.

This project turned out great. The kindergarteners loved reading the book and making their own books inspired by the story. Press Here was also a great book to make connections with the Little Bits circuits, collaborative work and experimenting with circuits. It was an informative project, fun, hands on learning for the students and it did not require a lot of setup for the library! This was a good introduction as we advance with our projects and start to introduce more robots, coding and maker projects during the school year.