You might not know it, but Play-Doh and similarly made modeling clay are conductive, which makes them a great way to introduce electronics to kids. Squishy Circuits has kits and recipes for both conductive and insulating clay. They recently turned to Kickstarter to raise money to make better kits and more projects.
Both the current and the upcoming Squishy Circuits kits come with a 4 AA battery pack to power your electronic creations, but the contents of the lone original kit will be distributed or expanded among the three new kits to give you more options. The components in these new kits will also be more durable, safer and easier to manufacture compared to the ones in the original kit.
University of St. Thomas Engineering professor AnnMarie Thomas and her then students Samuel Johnson and Matthew Schmidtbauer developed the Squishy Circuits project back in 2010. The following year Matthew spun off the project into a commercial company. You can still purchase the current Squishy Circuits kit and get the recipe for the clays from its current website, but both the current kit and that site will be phased out soon (the new site is here).
Pledge at least $8 (USD) on Kickstarter to receive a Squishy Circuits kit as a reward.
[via Geeky Gadgets]
