Throughout the summer, the C.H. Booth Library has been holding educational classes, called chbMakers, for the youth of Newtown. The last class took place on Wednesday, August 12, and was hosted by Kim Weber, the young adult librarian.

The chbMakers classes highlight different projects, and the classes held over the summer focused on a number of projects.

According to Ms Weber, the final class focused on teaching the kids about circuitry through two activities; MaKey MaKey and Squishy Circuits.

MaKey MaKey is an “easy-to-use invention kit,” according to its website, makeymakey.com. The Squishy Circuits website, courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/index.htm, says that “the goal of the project to design tools and activities which allow kids of all ages to create circuits and explore electronics using play dough.”

The August 12 class began with the Squishy Circuits activity. Ms Weber explained that each group would have a battery pack, conductive dough, LED lights, a buzzer, and a motor. The children’s task was first to build a circuit to allow the LEDs to light up.

One of the groups was made up of three girls, Emily and Laura Delp, 10, and Lilly Chenoweth, 10. Emily said that the activities were “cool” when they worked, but could be frustrating when they did not.

Sabrina Capodicci, 13, said that she was impressed that she could make a working circuit with only some dough, and that the energy could be conducted through the dough and then into the lights, motor, or buzzer.

After working with the Squishy Circuit kits, the kids made their way over laptops at the library to begin working with the MaKey MaKey kits.

Joey Chenoweth, 13, and Andrew Arena, 8, were both able to master the MaKey MaKey kit and then were able to use them to make game controllers. Joey and Andrew then used their controllers to play an online version of the popular video game Super Mario.

“We’re having a lot of fun,” said Ms Weber. “The whole purpose of these classes is to have fun. Because we’re not really teachers it’s a different learning experience than being at school.”