Making
Makey Makey
Kids clip wires to bananas, play-dough or pencil drawings and turn them into keys for computer games and music.
Makey Makey is a small circuit board with alligator clips, and the trick it plays is turning almost anything into a computer key. Clip one wire to a banana, hold the other, and a tap on the banana counts as a space bar press. From there kids seem to start inventing on their own: a fruit piano, a game controller sketched in pencil, a foil drum kit, a play-dough joystick. The maker’s site gathers ready-made piano and game apps, Scratch projects to remix and a large collection of guided activities, from building a first circuit and testing what conducts to hacking a toy or wiring up a voting machine. It reads as a very hands-on route into circuits and coding, and it looks likely to appeal to kids who enjoy experimenting with whatever is lying around the kitchen.
- Ages
- Curious makers in primary and middle school
- Works on
- Web browser
- Topics
- Making, Coding, Music, Science
- Languages
- English
- Listed
- 2026-10-18
What kids do
- Turn bananas into a working piano
- Sketch a pencil game controller on paper
- Test which household objects conduct electricity
- Code key presses in Scratch for a homemade game
Who it suits
Curious makers in primary and middle school.
Notes for parents
The board behaves like a keyboard, so it appears to work with ordinary web games and piano apps without any coding. The site lists thousands of projects and lesson ideas.
What you need
- Makey Makey kit
- Computer
- Everyday conductive objects like fruit, foil or pencil
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