I made a parallel circuit to demonstrate how one may be implemented. The target audience is high school seniors. The above picture illustrates one of the three resistors, and LEDs I will use in the circuit. You can think of this as a building block to the project.

Supplies

To build the circuit I used a bread board to place the 220 ohm resistors, wires, LEDs, and battery source. Bread board operation is as follows: the holes in row 1 are all connected. This is true for all the other rows. The vertical strips on the sides are all connected going from top to bottom.

Step 1: Parallel Connection

I utilized the basics of the breadboard to connect the resistors and LEDs in three parallel groups.

Step 2:

Step 1: Create the basic circuit. Connect the resistor to the negative power strip, that is the right vertical strip on the left hand side of the bread board. This should coincide with the row designated 55. Connect the LED as shown with one side on the third column and the other on the fourth column from the left. Make sure the LEDs are in the right position. Since these are essentially diodes current will only pass in one direction. Connect a wire going on row 55 from the fourth column to the 6th column. Then go up a few rows and connect a wire from the 6th column around row 63 to the middle screw mechanism.

Step 3:

I this step you want to repeat the previous step on row 50 of the bread board.

Step 4:

In this step you repeat the previous step by connecting the components to row 45 of the bread board. This should be straight forward in that it is essentially step 3 only at row 45.

Step 5:

In this final step connect the batteries to the circuit by connecting the red wire to the top screw mechanism and the black wire to the middle screw mechanism.