Father Christmas brought me a great new toy and I  spent most of last weekend playing with Gethin, Ffion, Gweno and Bronwyn (diolch plant!) and the DRAWDIO ‘pen’.

Drawdio is another amazing bit of kit from Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum from MIT Lifelong Kindergarten, the same stable as Makey Makey which we featured in an earlier post.

What is Drawdio?

“Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you turn your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, yourself, even the kitchen sink…

Drawdio brings to life the everyday interconnections between people and environment, encouraging you to use your sense of touch, and letting you hear otherwise invisible electrical connections by creating, remixing, and playing.”

The Drawdio kit

You can either buy your Drawdio ready made or make it yourself from a kit that looks like this.  It is not too difficult to put together but a bit fiddly. I don’t really think kids could put it together until they are 13 or 14, mainly because some of the components are a bit fragile – fine wires etc

• It comes with all electronic components, PCB, hardware – even a 2B pencil.
• It runs on a single AAA battery (not included) for many hours — even ‘nearly dead’ batteries work
• It uses any pencil, mechanical or plain, the softer the lead the better
• Ridiculously fun for all ages

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