Shapes: Learning for All With Makey Makey

Teachers teach ALL students. Sometimes our learning needs to look different depending on the student. Below is an example of an easy lesson you can create to make sure all of your students are working on essential skills.

This project would work well for Adapted Learning students as well as Visually Impaired students.

Supplies

• Make Makey
• HVAC Tape or Tin Foil
• Foam
• Cardboard
• Hot Glue- or any glue to attach foam to the shapes/board
• Scissors or X-Acto knife to cut cardboard
• PDF of Shapes
• Scratch Program

Step 1: Creating Shapes

Using the shape PDF I cut out shapes and wrapped them in HVAC tape. You can also use tin foil. You can use however many shapes you want for this project. I chose to use all 9 shapes on the PDF.

Step 2: Setting Up the Board

For this step you will want to apply a conducting piece of HVAC tape or tin foil to the board where your shape will connect to. I just cut out circles for this step. Next, I made a pressure switch out of each shape. I cut out pieces of foam to raise the shape above the conducting circle that is attached to the board. I used a hot glue gun to make sure all the pieces would stay connected.

Step 3: Connecting the Makey Makey

Now I cut a hole in the board where each wire can poke up next to the shape. I ran alligator clips to all shapes and connected them. I also ran copper tape from each shape to the bottom of the board to make the ground connection. On the back side of the board I taped down the wires and labeled what action went to what clip.

Step 4: Programming in Scratch

Once my board was set up, I created a simple code that allowed each command to say a different shape. Since I had 9 shapes, I needed 9 keyboard commands.

Here is the link to the scratch program.

Step 5: Watch the Learning Come Alive!

The last step was to connect all the alligator clips to the Makey Makey and the board. I also created a QR code so that students can scan the code and head straight to the Scratch Program.

I used an iPad to play the Shape Board, but a computer will also work.

Further Ideas:

After creating this activity, I plan to make a color board and an alphabet board so that kids can practice spelling their names!