Intro to Circuit Building Classroom Set

Intro to Circuit Building is a basic course designed to teach students to build electronics circuits using common electrical components. Along the way they will also learn how to read schematics and troubleshoot.

Intro to Circuit Building requires 6-10 hours of classroom time and is appropriate for students from 5th grade through adults. The online course materials include lesson and activity videos, written lesson materials, detailed activity instructions, and quizzes. Click here to download a sample lesson as well as the scope and sequence for the course.

If you are looking for semester or year-long electronics, coding, and/or robotics courses for middle school, high school, or adults, click here to view our Intro to Robotics course options.

The following skills are covered in Intro to Circuit Building:

• Learn how electricity and electrical equipment work
• Learn to properly use common electrical components that make up circuits including breadboards, batteries, LEDs, resistors, jumper wires, and switches
• Build both series and parallel circuits and understand how to use Ohm's Law when designing circuits
• Practice systematic troubleshooting techniques including half-splitting
• Learn to read schematic drawings

Yes, Circuit Building is designed to be an open-and-go, beginner level course.

We realize it is common for teachers with limited background knowledge to be assigned to teach a technology course and we are here to help!

The lessons assume neither the instructor or students have previous experience working with electronics. We strive to provide a low-stress option for instructors teaching STEM courses in a classroom or group setting with easy-to-follow lessons, step-by-step activity instructions (complete with very detailed photos), and standardized equipment kits.

Many teachers using our course have found it helpful to work through the course over the summer in preparation for teaching in the fall, but others have successfully taught the course by staying a few lessons ahead of their students.

Intro to Circuit Building is appropriate for 5th grade up through adults.

Intro to Circuit Building consists of the first eight lessons of Intro to Robotics Level A. It is designed as a short, basic course that can be used to teach simple electronics skills to a wide variety of age groups.

Advantages: Intro to Circuit Building teaches students how to build electrical circuits using common electronic components including breadboards, jumper wires, resistors, LEDs (one color and RGB), and pushbutton switches. It also covers systematic troubleshooting techniques and reading simple electrical schematics. The course typically requires 6-10 hours of classroom time depending on the age and maturity of the students. The course can generally be used with students ranging from 5th grade through adults. It requires no additional equipment with the exception of two AA batteries for each student kit.

Disadvantages: The content of Intro to Circuit Building is limited. The course does not cover writing code or using a Raspberry Pi.

Intro to Circuit Building requires 6-10 hours of classroom time depending on the age, maturity, and motivation of the students.

Click here access a sample lesson and a detailed scope and sequence for the course.

There are two line items that will need to appear on the purchase order:

• Classroom Base Bundle: Includes an online classroom login for the instructor and 5 student licenses/online classroom logins and equipment kits
• Extra Student Sets: Each set includes a student license/online classroom login and equipment kit

Each student will need two AA batteries to power their circuits.

The classroom teacher and each student will require their own login to access the online classroom. These logins will be set up and provided to your organization at the time your organization's purchase order is processed and the equipment kits shipped.

We do not offer online classroom access separately from the kits. We are 100% committed to troubleshooting any bumps you or your students may face on the road to learning. Unfortunately component connections can be configured differently or may not be compatible depending on the specific component or manufacturer, even though they may look almost identical. That means you'd likely to run into incompatibility issues and makes it really difficult (and potentially impossible) for us to troubleshoot effectively. Our goal is for our classroom sets to be open-and-go and low-stress for teachers. Ensuring students are working with a standardized kit of parts helps make that happen.

Generally speaking, equipment kit are reusable the next semester or following year for a new group of students with the caveat that small parts such as resistors and LEDs do tend to wear out and break with repeated use, we do recommend planning to replace these items regularly (please note, these are the inexpensive parts of the kit and we can help you with bulk replacements). 

While equipment kits are reusable, student licenses are consumable and must be purchased for each new group of students. Please contact us for license information (please note, student licenses without equipment kits are not listed on the website).

We are happy to help you work through this course with your students! Contact us via email and we will help you get back on the right track. While we also provide support via phone, we strongly recommend using email as it's easier to send pictures or copy of your code back and forth--this can help us troubleshoot far more efficiently. If you do need us to call you, please let us know days, times, and time zone that work well for you. We realize you are a busy person and we want to catch you at the right time!

No, we are unable to offer discounts or free shipping on classroom products. Actual freight charges will be added to the final invoice when ordering via purchase order.

We are happy to put together a customized quote for your district, school, or group. Please contact us and include the following info so we can expedite your request:

• Which levels of the course you are interested in purchasing? (Intro to Circuit Building vs. Level A+B vs. Levels A+B+C+D, etc.)
• How many students total you anticipate enrolling in the course?
• The number of students you anticipate sharing each equipment kit (for Intro to Circuit Building, each student will have their own equipment kit; for Intro to Robotics, we recommend 1-3 students share an equipment kit)

Please note, estimates are fine. We realize student enrollment numbers can fluctuate greatly and we can adjust the quote later, prior to purchase, if needed. Also we can assemble multiple quotes for different scenarios if that is helpful for your school's decision making process.

We generally try to respond to quote requests within 1-2 business days, but during our busy season (July and August) it may take a bit longer for quotes and PO processing. Please plan accordingly.

While you are welcome to order your classroom set online, we do strongly recommend utilizing our custom quote option so we can ensure you get the correct number of student licenses and equipment kits (we can often save schools money).

Most schools order our program via the following steps:

• Request a custom quote by contacting us (see above); we will provide a quote and W-9 form for your purchasing department
• Submit a purchase order to us; we recommend including the classroom teacher's email address on the PO so we can set up a download account for the teacher at the time the order is created. This will allow the teacher to access the lesson files without delay
• We will generally process your purchase order and ship your equipment kits within 2-3 business days; please note there can be short delays in processing for orders containing 100+ equipment sets or during our busiest season (July and August)
• Equipment kits are shipped from North Carolina via UPS Ground and generally take 2-8 business days to arrive; UPS will require a school staff member to sign for any package containing >$500 in equipment