A homeschool electronics unit you can teach without a background in it
You do not need to know electronics to teach this. The lessons check each step against the running circuit and tell your student what is still wrong, so you can learn alongside them.
- A good fit for grades 6 to 12
- About two or three hours a week for six weeks
- Nothing to buy or install
Projects to open
Each one runs in your browser in one click, with no account. Ages and times are suggestions.
A divider, measured
Week 2: measure voltages with a multimeter and check Ohm’s law.
- Grades 7 and up
- About 40 minutes
Six weeks, one idea at a time
The unit follows the Intro to Electronics pack, written for classrooms and just as useful at a kitchen table:
- Week 1: circuits as loops, and the breadboard.
- Week 2: Ohm’s law, series and parallel.
- Week 3: switches, LEDs and transistors.
- Week 4: capacitors and timing.
- Week 5: the 555 timer.
- Week 6: logic gates, and a design of their own.
Keeping a record
Each built-in lesson has steps that tick when the circuit does the right thing. Your student can save a project and share its link, so a portfolio is a list of links to circuits that still run.
Each week on the pack page lists objectives and vocabulary, which helps if your state asks for a description of what was covered.
What you need
Nothing but a browser. Mokxi is a web page. The circuit and the code run inside the browser tab, the C++ compiles there too, and nothing is downloaded or installed, so it works on a school Chromebook, a family laptop or a tablet.
Kids’ privacy, plainly
What happens to a child’s information, written from what the code does.
- Every project here opens and runs with no account, so a child never has to give a name or an email to use it.
- Saving work needs an account. A child under 13 can have one only with consent: a parent writes to us from their own email address and we confirm it, or a school gives consent for its classes.
- For a student in a class, no analytics or advertising tag loads on any page, and classmates never see each other’s email addresses.
The details, for parents and schools: Student data privacy, COPPA and FERPA
Questions
Do I need a science background?
No. Every lesson explains what to do, what should happen and what it means, and the checks tell your student when a step is right.
Can siblings of different ages do it together?
Yes. Younger children can do the circuits while older ones do the arithmetic and the written questions on the same project.
Is there an answer key?
The pack’s answer keys open for teachers with a class. Most homeschool families do not need one: the lessons check each step themselves, and their final hints give the answer away.
What about my child’s privacy?
The projects open with no account. If your child is under 13 and wants to save work, an account needs your consent first, which you give by writing to us from your own email address.
Give it a try
Open a project, press Run, and change one thing. No account needed to start.
Free forever. Every board and part. Saves your projects. Works on Chromebooks.