EEME Blog: Learning Kits + Lessons to Teach Kids Electronics & Python Coding

EEME makes monthly hands-on project kits and online lessons to teach kids electronics.

Due to COVID-19, my 2nd grade son has started remote schooling-at-home, now referred to as distance learning. I have predominantly taken the role of watching over his day-to-day education and am learning a lot on how to be a more effective home educator.

As a break from writing about electronics, STEM, and EEME, I thought I'd share some of the learning tactics I'm employing while working with my son.

Summer break has started

Second grade ended for my 8 year old son. Usually, we enroll him in various camps for the summer. But because of COVID, my wife and I have decided to keep both him and his 4 year old sister at home.

When school was in still in session, it was straight forward to keep my son's day pretty structured. He had his distance learning assignments. With my additional lessons on how to use checklists, my son paced his school day relatively effectively.

For the summer of 2020, I am still trying to maintain some structure in my kids' day. For my 4 year old daughter, we have a daily session of some combination of drawing, letter / number writing, and read-along. For my son, we have some combination of reading physical books, math on Khan Academy, programming on Khan Academy, and Mad-Lib writing practice.

About 30% of their day is pretty structured around learning. However, the remainder of the day is still quite chaotic. It generally revolves around free-form playing, goofing around, etc.. Kids will be kids and it is summer break after all.

So don't get me wrong, playing is essential for a kid (and even adults)! But as with anything, when you do it in an unbounded manner, you reach the point of diminishing returns, and end up consuming the entire day. For my kids, if the free-form playing occurs before the structured learning, we fight an uphill battle to even to the structured learning. For instance, my son will plan to have a reading session, but he wants to start his day playing. 8 hours later, near dinner time, I'd ask him if he's done his reading and the answer would be no. He got too involved in racing his toy cars and forgot. Argh!!

How I use the kitchen timer to help my son manage time

Life's most precious resource - time

This led me to a thought - we are taught not to waste food, not to waste water, not to waste money. But what about time?

Now, it is harsh to criticize a child's playing as a "waste of time". But how come we don't teach our kids to keep better track of time and to be more thoughtful in how they decide to spend it?

So rather than go down the path of being that nagging parent that constantly asks their kid if they've done XYZ, I bought my son a couple of kitchen timers. He wants to play, goof off, do whatever, no problem. I'd ask him, "how much time do you think you should spend on doing what you just said you'll do"? "What will you do afterwards"? Then I'd tell him to go set the timer! When the timer goes off, we created an understanding that he should autonomously transition to do that next thing he said he was going to do.

Sometimes he plans a learning sessions first, then a playing session next. No problem. Go set the timer and do it! Sometimes it's reverse. No problem again. Go set the timer and do it! My blood pressure has dropped 10-15% thanks to a kitchen timer.

The timer idea also had some secondary benefits. For some learning activities, he has a hard time getting started - such as Mad-Lib writing. With a timer, he's now become more autonomous about doing it. He knows the exercise is bounded. It doesn't feel so overwhelming to understake. So he has become more willing to do them and does it more effectively.

Conclusion

Even as adults, we've felt overwhelmed at certain tasks (ahem... doing taxes). The timer habit has helped me as well. As a mattter of fact, the timer idea is basically the Pomodoro Technique. But rather than 20 minute chunks, my son has the ability to choose the amount of time to spend on a task. I believe this makes him feel empowered. Additionally, if he chooses 1 minute to read or 8 hours to play, then it's an opportunity for us to reason together about why that may not be the best idea. "If you really want to swim with and study sharks when you get older, you have to learn to read well". For the most part, he gets it.

Unfortunately, my 4 year old daughter is still too young. Stay tuned, I'll write an update 4 years from now. But her older brother does set the timer for her and has started coaching her on time management as well. Oh yeah!! =)

The timer exercise has inspired our family to add the value of time into our set of family values. At the end of the day, time is the universal resource that is guarateed to run out for everyone. Let's make sure our kids understand the value of time, and then trust their judgement to know how to use it wisely as they mature.

If you found this post helpful, please give the timer idea a try with your kids. I'd love to hear how it works for your family.

If you have any strategies or tactics of your own, please reach out and share them by visiting EEME's Facebook or EEME's Instagram page or emailing me directly - dad AT eeme DOT co (not com!).

If you are looking for hands-on electronics kits for your 7-12 year old kid, we are still shipping during this COVID-19 fiasco. Each kit is paired with its own online curriculum to teach your family how to build the circuit as well as how the circuit works.

You can learn with EEME in three ways:

1. Sign up for FREE, to learn with our free online lessons

2. Subscribe to our monthly kits - each month we send you a new project.

3. Make a one-time purchase of our 9 project set - which is effectively the first 9 month's of projects.

Thanks so much, stay safe, and happy building!!
Jack "EEME Dad"

EEME makes monthly hands-on project kits and online lessons to teach kids electronics.

Due to COVID-19, my 2nd grade son has started remote schooling-at-home. I have predominantly taken the role of watching over his day-to-day education and am learning a lot on how to be a more effective home educator.

As a break from writing about electronics, STEM, and EEME, I thought I'd share some of the learning tactics I'm employing while working with my son.

As the primary parent watching over my son's day-to-day 2nd grade schooling-at-home, I've inevitably been tasked with overseeing and double checking his assignments.

I noticed that mistakes fall under 2 categories:

1. Careless mistakes.
2. Mistakes from genuinely not knowing how to do whatever was assigned.

For (1), I would try to coach him on creating a process to hone his attention such as making better instructions, among other tactics which I hope to write about in the future.

Addressing mistakes from (2) should be straight forward. My son didn't know how to tackle this particular question or assignment. His bucket of knowledge for this assignment was empty or close to empty. So I should teach him how to do it, show him what it means, ie fill his bucket of knowledge, then move on... right?

That would be the case if I only intend to fill his buckets of knowledge. But I think we can do better as parents and educators and in the process help them become more self-aware and confident.

Awareness to know when your bucket is empty

My son once had a math problem that involved carry-over subtraction: 56 - 28. His answer was wrong. When I asked him to try again, he gave another seemingly random answer. Upon asking him how he came up with the answer, he explained a convoluted process that clearly was not correct. Turns out he actually didn't remember how to subtract with carry-overs.

On one hand, I applaud him for trying. But in this particular case, when working collaboratively with me or any other coach or educator, when he clearly doesn't know how to do something, I'd prefer him to be self-aware of the fact that he doesn't know, and just straight up ask for help rather than continuously guess.

But achieving self-awareness is challenging, even for adults. In addition to helping my son fill his buckets of knowledge, how can I better coach him to be more self-aware to know when his own bucket is empty and to seek help?

The universally valid answer we should explicitly teach

When working together on his lessons, I started to notice a pattern in the tone of how my son answers questions.

For example, for the math problem above, I'd ask him to try a simpler variation: 26 - 2. Then I'd crank up the difficulty, which will involve carry over: 26 - 8. He'll answer both questions. The first answer he'll get right - 24. The second answer will be wrong - 22.

When I ask him to state his answer out loud, there is a distinct difference in tone for the 2 answers. He states the first answer very definitively as a statement - "24!". But the second answer will be stated to sound like a question - "22??".

I started noticing this uncertain tone in his answers for questions he didn't know the answer to, across various subject matters - grammar, vocab, history, math, art, etc.. The question-like tone in his answers seemed like a good signal for when he doesn't know something.

So I started to more deliberately address the tone of his answers when working collaboratively together on a lesson or assignment. Upon answering a question, I would ask my son "are you telling me the answer, or are your asking me the answer"? If he's asking me, ie stating the answer in a question-like tone, I would have him retract his answer and re-state to me "I don't know, I don't understand, can you please explain it to me again".

Interesting enough, when I think back to my own childhood, the answer "I don't know" is never taught explicitly to be a valid answer. I don't believe it was ever explicitly taught to my son either. Yet, in my young adult school life and in my career, I can recall a large number of times I wish I had the awareness or confidence to just say "I don't know" so I can get clarification immediately. I don't want my kids to suffer the same shortcomings. So now I encourage the both of my kids to state confidently, "I don't know" or "I don't understand, can you please explain it to me again" during our learning sessions or even casual conversations together.

To help my son be more self-aware of when he doesn't know, I now ask my him to state his answers out-loud or in his head, and then be aware of the tone of his answer - "are you asking, or stating the answer". If he thinks he is "asking the answer", then I encourage him to just state "I don't know, please explain it to me".

Conclusion

My son tends to rush into answers and, even if he is not prepared to take them on, very rarely will shy away from challenges. I don't want him to lose his confidence in "taking a stab" at a problem. But I also want him to become more self-aware of when he doesn't know something and to be confident in asking for help. It's my job and a bit of artistry to find the right balance.

I understand all kids are built differently. How a parent balances out encouraging their kid to "give it a try" versus asking for help varies from kid to kid. Despite being related to her brother, this balance will be different even for my 4 year old daughter. On the other hand, this exercise works for all cases when the kid (or even an adult) straight up guesses.

But differing personalities aside, we should all do our best to coach our kids to be self-aware of when they don't know something, and to confidently state "I don't know, I don't understand" and ask for help. Through self-awareness and confidence, we better set them up to be self-driven life-long learners and forever curious.

If you have any strategies or tactics of your own, please reach out and share them by visiting EEME's Facebook or EEME's Instagram page or emailing me directly - dad AT eeme DOT co (not com!).

If you are looking for hands-on electronics kits for your 7-12 year old kid, we are still shipping during this COVID-19 fiasco. Each kit is paired with its own online curriculum to teach your family how to build the circuit as well as how the circuit works.

You can learn with EEME in three ways:

1. Sign up for FREE, to learn with our free online lessons

2. Subscribe to our monthly kits - each month we send you a new project.

3. Make a one-time purchase of our 9 project set - which is effectively the first 9 month's of projects.

Thanks so much, stay safe, and happy building!!
Jack "EEME Dad"

EEME makes monthly hands-on project kits and online lessons to teach kids electronics.

Due to COVID-19, my 2nd grade son has started remote schooling-at-home. I have predominantly taken the role of watching over his day-to-day education and am learning a lot on how to be a more effective home educator.

As a break from writing about electronics, STEM, and EEME, I thought I'd share some of the learning tactics I'm employing while working with my son.

Ben Franklin meets Mad Libs

My introduction to 2nd grade writing

Each day, my son has a 45 minute writing assignment. The assignments are generally editorial-like, focused on expressing ideas and opinions such as writing about a book he recommends, a favorite toy, etc.. For the most part, his ideas are great. But his sentence structure needs a lot of work. The sentences are mostly run-on combining multiple thoughts into a single large sentence separated by commas.

After showing my son how he can systematically replace commas with a period, I realized that each individual sentence all share a common structure where it starts with a pronoun followed by a verb.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't have high expectations for how a 2nd grader should write. That doesn't mean I shouldn't find some way to help him gradually improve and add more sophisticated sentence structures into his writing arsenal. But how?

Improve writing like Benjamin Franklin

I am not a great writer. I can express ideas clearly and directly. But my writing definitely pales compared to great writers, such as my wife who was a comparative literature major.

When I was younger, I was always, and still am, drawn to math. Therefore, when it came to writing, I never deliberately practiced as much as I did as with math problems. I am also not genetically smart enough to just pick things up by osmosis (ie improve my writing by simply reading).

When I ask for advice on how to improve my writing, I am always told to go and write more. As a proponent of targeted and deliberate practice, this suggestion always seemed vacuous to me. Doing more of something, while better than doing nothing, is an inefficient way to fine tune a skill.

To improve writing, the most thoughtful advise I every came across was to use the Benjamin Franklin method. Apparently Benjamin Franklin learned how to write masterfully by deliberately imitating the writings he admired. By targeting his writing practices around this exercise, he became one of the most skillful writers of his time. Arguably, his refined writing skills became instrumental in rallying patriotic efforts during the period of the American Revolution.

With this exercise in mind, I had my son pick out some of his favorite books. We set aside 15 to 30 minutes once or twice a week where he would write out sentences from these books, word-for-word, eventually from memory. Since he liked these books, he actually did so willingly, no tears necessary.

But something was still amiss. This act of "copying" didn't seem intuitively beneficial nor did I see him employ the structures of the "copied" sentences into his own writing.

Mad Libs to spice things up

During the original Karate Kid movie, there was a scene where Daniel's painting the fence and waxing the car for hours. He eventually gets really fed up with the exercises and protests out load. Mr Miyagi then throws a punch at him and tells him to paint the fence. Daniel manages to use the painting motion to block the punch and an a-ha moment lights up.

I believe that a-ha moment came because Mr. Miyagi took a repetitive exercise (painting a fence with a strict up-down wrist movement) and threw it into a dynamic situation (a punch in a fight). I felt the Ben Franklin copying exercise needed a similar dynamic application in order to light an a-ha moment for my son.

One-day I found an old kid activity sheet from a local burger joint with a Mad Libs activity laying around the house. In case you don't remember Mad Libs, it's "a phrasal template word game where one player prompts others for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story". An idea sparked to combine Mad Libs with the Ben Franklin exercise to add dynamism.

During our next writing session, instead of having my son spend all of his time copying the sentences, I had him do 2 things:

1. Copy the sentence from the book.
2. Replace select nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs from that sentence to create new sentences that have completely different meanings.

The addition of Mad Libs also added some silliness into this writing exercise which lightened up the mood. But more importantly, he was actually thinking through ideas while applying the more complicated sentence structure he copied.

Conclusion

Practice leads to perfection. It's ok to employ targeted practice that only involves copycat repetition (ie copying sentences, practicing the scales on the piano, etc). But it's much better to combine copycat targeted practice with a dynamic application of what you repeat (ie playing the scale over a melody of chords). Or for this specific post, a method that combines Mad Libs with the Ben Franklin writing exercise to help my son (even help me as an adult) improve their writing skills.

So far, these exercises are still welcomed by my son. We just started this new practice method so he isn't writing like Ben Franklin yet. Rome wasn't built in a day. But I have noticed small improvements in the sentences he writes for his daily assignments.

Regardless if you are schooling-at-home due to COVID-19, or homeschooling, or simply tutoring your kid after school, I believe this exercise should help your kid's writing. It should help an adult's writing as well! As I continue to learn new schooling strategies and tactics like this, I'll continue to share.

If you have any strategies or tactics of your own, please reach out and share them as well by visiting EEME's Facebook or EEME's Instagram page or emailing me directly - dad AT eeme DOT co (not com!).

If you are looking for hands-on electronics kits for your 7-12 year old kid, we are still shipping during this COVID-19 fiasco. Each kit is paired with its own online curriculum to teach your family how to build the circuit as well as how the circuit works.

You can learn with EEME in three ways:

1. Sign up for FREE, to learn with our free online lessons

2. Subscribe to our monthly kits - each month we send you a new project.

3. Make a one-time purchase of our 9 project set - which is effectively the first 9 month's of projects.

Thanks so much, stay safe, and happy building!!
Jack "EEME Dad"

EEME makes monthly hands-on project kits and online lessons to teach kids electronics.

I am the geeky dad who makes all the EEME circuit projects and online lessons.

But this post is not about EEME. Instead, it will be about how to teach our kids to process and understand assignment instructions - more on that later. First, allow me share some background.

Working with my son to process assignment instructions... but first some background.

COVID-19 has our family schooling-at-home

Along with EEME, I also made, with the help from my wife, 2 kids. My daughter is 3 years old and my son's 7 years old. While I understand the importance of playing an active daily role in their education, both my kids attend a brick and mortar school. My daughter attends a non-profit preschool. My son goes to 2nd grade in our locally zoned public school.

Although homeschooling has always appealed to me, it was an impractical consideration for my family since both my wife and I had to work full-time. Then COVID-19 emerged. Now, with the lockdowns in place and our schools closed due to COVID-19, schooling at home has become mandatory in our household.

(UPDATE: April 21, 2020: For those who have read the original article, you may recall my use of "homeschooling" to describe our situation. A number of homeschooling families have pointed out the inaccuracies of using that terminology. Since my purpose of writing is not to accurately define our schooling situation, I'll defer to their expertise, and instead use the term "schooling-at-home". Regardless, the lessons I learned during our family's "schooling-at-home" should apply to any educational environment - homeschooling, brick-and-mortar schooling, blended learning, etc..)

Like us, if you were not actively involved in your kids' day-to-day education, you probably are now. My wife works in corporate (thanksfully, she can do it working from home) so her time is still dictated by a fixed schedule with deadlines and meetings. Since I run my own business (EEME!) I naturally have a bit more flexibility to take on the primary role of the schooling-at-home parent educator.

Our kids' schools have been fantastic with adapting to distance learning. The teachers play a role similar to a homeschooler's chosen Educational Specialist/Consultant. We receive curriculum material from them digitally or we go to the school once every couple of weeks to grab physical materials. Each day, we are presented a learning program to help pace the day. But the responsibility of clarifying instructions, enforcing time schedules for working on different subjects, checking the "integrity" of assignments, managing my kids' emotions during learning, have all fallen on to our shoulders as parents.

Why are we not teaching our kids how to learn?

It has been a couple of weeks since the start of our schooling-at-home adventures. In a couple of future posts, starting with this one, I will share with you some of the lessons I learned from my experience so far.

For us, our son's grade-school daily lessons are more structured than our daughter's preschool ones. I find that structured learning requires a bit more parental coaching. So I'll primarily focus on my experience learning with my 2nd grade, 7 year old son.

I won't be writing about electronics, robotics, or even how to teach math or english. Instead I want to focus on how I'm trying to teach my kids how to learn, inspired by my own personal studies on learning how to learn, a incredibly important skill that I don't believe is emphasized enough in K12 curriculums, if at all.

I will be writing tactical suggestions. They will be suggestions you can actualy implement and do with your kids right away. While I will explain the rationale behind the suggestions, I will avoid simply writing about high level strategy which can still leave you scratching your head on how to implement the strategy in your day-to-day schooling-at-home, blended learning, homeschooling, or what not. So fear not. I will explain how to do it, and what to do.

So with further delay - in this post, I will suggest a method to help your kids process, understand, and re-synthesize assignment instructions.

He read it, says he understands it, but does he?

Each day, our family receives a series of assignments from our 2nd grade teacher. Each assignment has instructions. My son reads the instructions, one word at a time in a focused manner. When he finishes, I ask him if he understands and he says yes. So, I leave him to it.

When I return 15 minutes later to check up, he's still staring at a blank sheet of paper. When I ask him why he hasn't done anything, he often answers, "I'm thinking". Another 5 minutes pass, the paper's still blank. And this time he confesses that he doesn't really understand the assignment.

My son wasn't lying the first time I asked him. I believe him. Because in my own day to day life, I know I have thought I knew what an article or book says, what certain instructions are, only to not realize I don't really know when called upon to re-express the gist, or execute the instruction. I think we have all been in this situation before.

So my son and I re-read the instructions together, but this time, sentence by sentence, I explain each step in a different way. This is probably what the teacher does when they notice a student stalled on an assignment in class. It works. He's now making material progress on this assignment.

You might think "victory"! But how sustainable is this process? If I, or a teacher, am to read every sentence of an instruction with him, for nearly every assignment, I'd lose my mind! Additionally, what happens when there isn't anyone around. By working so closely with him on understanding the assignment instructions, I just gave my son a fish. Can I teach him to fish instead?

Checklists are better than sliced bread

I am a huge proponent of creating, refining, and following process - ie playbooks. I have a playbook for nearly everything - for my morning routine, how to start a work assignment, what I need to do before I go biking, etc.. Each playbook in its simplest form, is effectively an ordered checklist. You shouldn't do step 2 until you did step 1. With a checklist in hand, I exert less mental energy on executing my day-to-day routines. I follow my checklist/playbook and just do it. On a regular basis, I sit down and refine my playbooks by looking back in my notes or journal to understand what worked, what didn't. Rinse and repeat.

For my son's assignments, instead of reading the instructions and trying to jump right in, I started to ask him to convert the instructions into a checklist which he can follow. This process has a couple of benefits:

• It requires him to think critically about the instructions themselves. Through the act of resynthesizing the instructions and converting it into checklist items as sound bites, he internalizes and develops a deeper understanding for each step.

• Instructions are rarely written in order - ie the first thing you should do is rarely the first thing written.

Here's an example for an assignment he received:

"Title: What is your favorite animal and why? Description: write a couple of sentences for the question. Click on the link below to submit what you wrote. Please check the punctuation and capitalization, and make sure it makes sense before you submit."

The checklist he created from this was:

1. Write on paper a couple of sentences of what your favorite animal is *
2. Write on paper a couple of sentences of why that is your favorite animal *
3. Check to see if what you wrote makes sense
4. Check the punctuation and capitalization of what you wrote
5. Click on the link
6. Type in your submission
7. Double check what you typed is what you wrote on paper
8. Click submit button

* Because my son is still learning to type, I have him write on paper first.

As you can see, the instructions are not expressed exactly in the order of action! Additionally, you can also see how the checklist becomes much easier to ingest and execute.

For the next couple of days, I coached him on how to create this checklist. I'd ask him to pull apart the instructions sentence by sentence. Order them into a checklist. Re-read the checklist to make sure the ordering makes sense. IE - you can't type what you wrote before you write it on paper. As a 2nd grader, he's pretty capable of rationalizing the sanity of a checklist. Your mileage may vary for younger kids.

Now, for each assignment, I'd ask him to convert instructions into a checklist where he can stick his fingers out one by one and tell me the steps in a sound bite manner - "one - do blah", "two - do bleh", etc.. In doing this, he does spend a little more time prepping for an assignment. But I found he is quicker to discover when he doesn't understand something and come ask. And he finishes the assignments quicker with less mistakes as well. While we are far from perfect, I have become more hands-off and he feels more autonomously successful.

Conclusion

Most school curriculums focus on math, science, writing - the "what to learns". But how you learn, how you approach learning is as important, if not more important, than what you learn. During my brief crash dive into schooling-at-home, I had to really think about how to help my kids learn more effectively and efficiently. In that process, I have also become a better learner! To teach is to learn twice!

I will post more tactical suggestions in upcoming posts. Please follow along by signing up to EEME's free online lessons to learn electronics (which also puts you on our mailing list).

If you have suggestions or comments, feel free to drop me a note or visit EEME's Facebook or EEME's Instagram page to chime in.

If you are looking for hands-on electronics kits for your 7-12 year old kid, we are still shipping during this COVID-19 fiasco. Each kit is paired with its own online curriculum to teach your family how to build the circuit as well as how the circuit works. You can learn with EEME kits in two ways:

1. Subscribe monthly - each month we send you a new project.

2. Make a one-time purchase of our 9 project set - which is effectively the first 9 month's of projects.

Thanks so much, stay safe, and happy building!!
Jack "EEME Dad"

As some EEME Families have noticed, we recently changed EEME's main website. As wrinkles continue to get ironed out, it will be apparent that the change was indeed an upgrade! Along with the website, we are also moving to a new blog platform. As time moves on, we will migrate some of the older articles to the new blog. If something is hugely amiss, please let us know!

In the meantime, subscribe to our monthly hands-on kits to learn electronics and foster your family's future technologist!

Thanks!

Jack "EEME Dad" and the EEME Team

EEME makes hands-on learning kits and online lessons to teach kids electronics.

While cooking the other day, I realized my family had about 40 different spices and seasonings in our cupboard. I regularly cook with about 10 or so. My wife, who is more of a baker, uses about 30 or so. As a chef, that’s a lot of input ingredients and complexity to consider. Yet, we are generally not intimidated by cooking and we all do it.

Turns out, when considering the complexity of input ingredients, circuit design is way simpler than cooking. Unlike cooking ingredients, circuit designers use effectively 6 fundamental components - that’s right SIX - to build and design any modern day tech gadget of any variety.

(Top left to right: resistor, capacitor, inductor, diode, transistor. Bottom: wire)

1. Wire - this is what you use to connect components together. It is also the fundamental building block for something like a light bulb which is effectively a very fine piece of wire (ie filament) that emits light and heats up when electric current flows upon a flick of the switch.

2. Resistors - as its name suggests a resistor resists electric current. Like how a river dam controls and limits water current flow down the river, the resistor limits the amount of electric current flowing through our circuit. As an example, by controlling electric current, we can limit how bright an light bulb shines.

3. Capacitors - this component stores and provides electric energy much like a water reservoir can store and provide water when needed. Sometimes voltage drops because your battery or wall outlet is not a perfect source of electric energy and on occasion the voltage can drop temporarily - say when the vibrating motor on your phone kicks on. During this moment of voltage drop, the capacitor can make up the temporary loss to prevent your phone from resetting. Additionally, without diving into detail, a capacitor’s ability to store electricity makes it an essential component to convert the alternating current (AC) from your wall outlet to a stable direct current (DC) needed to say, charge your cell phone.

4. Inductors - this component also stores electric energy but in the form of a magnetic field. It is the fundamental building block for an electro-magnet, which is the building block for an electric motor.

5. Diodes - in a wire, electric current can flow in either direction - from one end or the other. Such is the case with alternating current (AC) coming out of your wall socket - current is moving back and forth. Simply speaking, a diode is a one way traffic officer that allows electric current to only flow in one direction. Combined with a capacitor and resistor, you have a circuit that can convert AC to DC - a circuit in every wall adapter you own. Additionally, diodes have another amazing property for a totally different yet pervasive application. When electric current passes through a diode, the diode can emit light which is the fundamental property of light emitting diodes better known as LED’s.

6. Transistors - due to similarities in construction, a transistor is a cousin to diodes. While diodes directs electric current to only flow in one direction, transistors can control when/if electric current can flow through. In other words it’s a switch. For a mechanical switch, like a wall switch, when it’s on, the switch closes the circuit and electric current can flow through the switch. The switch toggle is mechanical - meaning, you physically need to turn it on or off.
   
   For a transistor, the toggle is electrical. Depending on the voltage applied to its electric toggle, the transistor switch turns on or off. Imagine a transistor switch that controls if/when another transistor switch turns on/off, that controls another transistor switch and so on. That chain or topology of how the transistor switches wire together in a circuit define it’s functionality. Does the circuit implement a simple calculator, timer? Or perhaps this circuit (of millions of transistors) implements a modern central processing unit (CPU) in a computer or smartphone.

With these 6 components, you can create anything from a simple light circuit to a modern day computer.

With EEME, your family will use all them to build the various projects. And we'll dive deeper into how they work.

If you don’t view cooking as a monumental skill, then you have no reason to be intimidated by circuit design.

Learn with our Python Coding and Electronics learning kit, and foster your family's future technologist!

Happy building! Jack "EEME Dad"

EEME was recently approached by iLEAD Explorations, a homeschool / home study school, for an interview about EEME Dad and EEME. The interview was published in their Monday Message to their community. Given that many families have asked about EEME’s history, we decided to post the interview here on our blog as well.

If your kid has a curiosity for how technology works, purchase our Python Coding and Electronics learning kit and foster your family's future technologist!

Enjoy! Jack “EEME Dad”

Tell us about your background in electronics.

First off, let me present a general introduction. My name is Jack Pien and I am the founder of EEME (pronouced EE-mee) which is an acronym for Electrical Engineer Mechanical Engineer. EEME teaches kids electronics and coding with hands-on project kits. Each project kit is paired with its own online lessons to show the kids how to build and code the project and, more importantly, teach them how the project and code they write works. Our website is - https://www.eeme.co (that’s dot CO, not com).

I have a degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and worked in various San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech companies for over a decade before starting EEME. My exposure to electronics ranges from having worked as an architect and/or software engineer at circuit chip design companies such as NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD, to having a hobbyist's enthusiasm for designing guitar tube amplifiers, guitar pedals and building robots.

How, when and why was EEME created?

EEME is almost four years old, and my son is almost four (Update 2/12/2023 - son is 11, and daughter is 7. Time flies!!). As a new parent, I started researching edu resources available for kids these days. I learned about Khan Academy, Udacity, and Coursera. At the same time, I was spending my non-parent hours just building fun robots absorbing the Make movement.

These two exercises had me recall my own childhood where I was constantly taking apart calculators, electronic devices and playing with Radio Shack electronic kits. I recalled being frustrated with not knowing how any of these kits or the parts laid out in front of me worked since no one was able to teach me.

Yet 3+ decades later, in the 21st century, there still was no edu resource that paired hands-on project kits (that has become pervasive with the Make movement), with the ubiquity and distributability of online video lessons (that has become pervasive with the MOOCs movement) to teach the kids how the projects work. Hence EEME was born to fill that hole and bridge the Make and MOOCs movement together.

Do you create the kits? How do you decide which ones to purchase or develop?

I personally create each of the project kits as well as design the lesson curriculum. A lot of it is inspired with, well, tapping my own childhood enthusiasm by just looking around and, rather than taking for granted, say, how a night light works, trying to dig in and understand exactly how it works.

I then design a circuit that is simple enough for a kid to make, simple enough to explain in a handful of 2-3 minute video sequences and that uses safe and easy-to-handle electronic components (I’d love to create a guitar tube amplifier project but that will require 200+ volts of electricity which is probably not going to fly with the safety criteria!).

Why/how is this so important to a child’s future?

I think people miss the point around all the talk of STEM, STEAM, arts vs science/math, etc. EEME is not even about the electronics. It’s about learning through hands-on building - preferably building something that’s actually applicable to our everyday world - versus just reading about it in a text or in a lecture by a teacher.

Being hands-on intimately fosters curiosity. The reward of understanding how something works becomes tangible. As a child grows into adulthood, childhood hands-on building establishes a foundation to be curious and suppresses the fear of doing and making.

A healthy dose of youthful curiosity that hands-on building nurtures can help an adult transition into old age as well.

Do you offer classes and/or how would a homeschool mom get the support she needs to conduct these lessons?

A family can learn with EEME with the Python Coding and Electronics learning kit.

Each project is paired with its own online lessons and curricula to show the learner how to build and write Python code for the project and teaches them how it works.

Everything is included in the kits. Parents can learn with the kids as they build together!

We don’t (currently) offer classes but some homeschooling families have expressed interest in using our kits for workshops where groups of kids get together to build. If that’s something the families want to explore, we’d love to have a conversation. Please email me - dad@eeme.co (dot CO, not com).

How can someone find out more about what you have to offer?

We also have free online lessons which simulates circuit building (coding lessons soon to be added too!). Visit our site to sign up. From our site, you can also learn about our project kits. You can preview the online lessons for mostly all our projects.

So, if a family is unsure about EEME as a fit for their learners, sign up via our website to:

1. Check out the free online lessons
2. Have your kids watch the first couple of video lessons from the Python Coding and Electronics curricula.

...and you should be able to get a feel for fit.

You may also email me directly - dad@eeme.co. We welcome any family to reach out!

Purchase EEME's Python Coding and Electronics learning kit.

EEME makes hands-on projects to teach kids electronics. One way to learn with EEME is with our monthly hands-on electronics projects. Each month, your family receives a new electronics kit to build and learn about.

Besides the projects we define, there are actually a number of different things you can build and experiment with using the components from our projects kits. Here are a couple of suggestions (from us at EEME as well as submitted from EEME families building our monthly kits):

1. LEGO reed switch (using LEGO pieces, magnets and Project Attraction)
2. Lemon battery LED light circuit (using lemons and Project Genius Light)
3. Infrared proximity sensor (using Project Tentacles and IR)
4. Project Genius Buzzer (using Project Genius Light and Project Tentacles)
5. Morse code generator (using Project Tentacles and Project Fade to Black)

What other project ideas can your family come up with? We’d love to know! Please submit your awesome project ideas!

Subscribe to our monthly hands-on project kits to learn electronics and foster your family's future technologist!

Thanks and happy building!

Jack "EEME Dad"

An EEME family recently took Project Genius Light and Project Tentacles - from EEME's monthly electronics project subscriptions - to build a Project Genius Buzzer!

Hey EEME Dad!

Here is a beeper that will sound if it is too dark and if something is too close to it.

Components Needed: 1. piezo beeper form Project Tentacles 1. 3.3k resistor from Project Tentacles and/or other resistors around 3.3k 1. 4 wires from Project Genius Light 1. Photoresistor from Project Genius Light

Concepts learned - how a piezo buzzer works - how varying the amount of resistance affects the sound of the beep. - how it is similar to an IR sensor, but with visible light instead

Totally awesome! Hope your family is inspired as we are!

Subscribe to our monthly hands-on project kits to learn electronics and foster your family's future technologist!

Happy building!

Jack "EEME Dad"

EEME makes hands-on projects and online lessons to teach kids electronics. Through hands-on project base learning, kids not only learn the subject at hand but they also develop a curiosity for how things in the world around them work.

Unlike most edutainment toys, each EEME project combines the entertainment of building with explicit teaching and learning.

There are predominately 2 ways to learn with EEME.

1) With our FREE interactive online lessons.

By signing up with a free account, your family can build and learn about various electronics circuits with our interactive platform.

These online lessons are the best way to get introduced to the EEME learning and building experience.

2) With our monthly hands-on project subscription.

Each month, your family will receive an electronics project kit to work on. Each project is paired with its own online curricula to not only show your family how to build the project, but also teaches them the concepts applied. Each month’s project builds in concept from the previous months’.

Our monthly projects are ideal for kids (ages 7 and up) and families who look forward to a new project to work on each month.

EEME emphasizes learning and fostering curiosity through hands-on play. In addition to our projects and lessons, we are constantly streaming educational projects and experiments to try on our blog, Facebook, and Instagram pages. So please stay connected with us!

Lastly, EEME would not be great without your support and feedback. So please provide us your thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve.

Don’t hesitate to reach out! I personally check and answer every email received.

Thanks and happy building!

Jack “EEME Dad”