Light Up New Year's Ball Craft: New Year's STEM!

My kids love New Year’s activities, and although we don’t usually do much learning near New Year’s Day because of Christmas break, this year, we decided to try out our new Squishy Circuits to see if we could make a light-up New Year’s Ball! The New Year’s ball drop is one of our favorite activities, and it was fun to recreate the iconic ball at home. We thought this activity was a fun twist on a traditional New Years ball craft.

This activity is one of our favorite technology activities for kids!

Kids will have a blast lighting up their very own circuit New Year’s ball craft made out of Squishy Circuits! It’s a fun way to ring in the new year!

Light Up New Year’s Ball Craft

You can make your own light-up ball using our instructions!

Please note, safety is important during this activity! You are working with a live (although low watt) electrical connection. Be careful!

What you’ll need to make a light-up New Year’s Ball craft:

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Squishy Circuits kit
Conductive dough (play dough or you can make your own)
Insulating dough (modeling clay or you can make your own)

We first made our own glittery conductive dough. We thought the glitter seemed more festive. We used modeling clay we had on hand for our insulating dough.

To make a circuit work, you have to have to conductive doughs separated by an insulating dough. The lights split over the insulating dough and stick into both pieces of conductive dough. If you cover the insulating dough or have the conductive dough touch, the lights won’t turn on.

We found the clam-like shape to work best at looking similar to a ball, but it didn’t hide any of the important pieces to complete the circuit.