Garrett Morgan- Traffic Light Paper Circuit

As part of our economics unit study, my son and I are learning about different jobs he is interested in. He wants to be an engineer when he grows up, so we went down a little rabbit trail as he learned about who and what an engineer is. 

We read Saving The Day, a story about Garrett Morgan who invented the traffic signal. This led us to make our own paper traffic signal circuit. 

Material 

1. LED Lights

2. Copper Tape

3. Large Paper Clip

4. Traffic Light printable

5. CR2032 3V Battery 

This was a really fun activity my son really enjoyed. I love it when our lessons take us on an adventure. 

Electricity Unit Study

We recently did an electricity unit study with our novel study "The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind."  During this unit study, we covered circuits, static electricity, and wind turbines. 

Books We Read From:

1. The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

2. Magic School Bus and the Electric Field Trip

3. Electric Wizard

4. Switch on Switch off

We used this Circuit kit for building and learning all about how they work. 

We also learned about simple circuits 

We learned about different conductors. Here we used a lead pencil to create a circuit. 

We made a lemon clock. 

Along with the experiment kits and books we read, my son put together a lapbook. 

You can grab this lapbook from Undercover Classroom TPT store. 

This lapbook kit contains the following interactive parts:

1. Lapbook cover

2. Electricity vocabulary pocket and cards (battery, circuit, closed circuit, conductor, filament, insulator, open circuit, parallel circuit, series circuit, short circuit, switch, volt)

3. Pioneers of electricity flap book (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Morse, Michael Faraday, Joseph Henry, Thomas Edison)

4. Simple circuit diagram (energy source, electrical path, output device)

5. Types of circuits layered book (series and parallel)

6. Circuit tool kit pocket (batteries and lightbulbs) *

7. Parts of a lightbulb diagram

8. Conductors and insulators interlock

9. Circuit symbols chart

10. Troubleshooting fan book