Circuit Training for a 6 Year Old

"Guess what time it is?" I asked Lukas tonight.

"Is it on?" he asked in an excited response.  "Yep, it just started" I let him know.  "Let's see if we can find it!"

And with that, I carefully carried the contraption, which Lukas had so carefully constructed the day before, to the kitchen island and let him turn it on.  It immediately crackled and let out a hiss of static through the tiny speaker.

At first, I was a bit afraid that we might come across some weird, coded message, reminiscent of an episode of LOST.  After all, that had happened to us before.

But, with some searching and careful adjustment of the multi-functional dial, the output that we were looking for spurted out of the speaker both loud and clear.  It was the unmistakably sound of a baseball game.

"You did it buddy!  You picked up the Mariners game."  This made him smile.  I was pretty excited too.

In fact, there is a good chance this will prove the most exciting Seattle Mariners moment we have this Summer.  But hey, it's not yet opening day and our team is tied for 1st place.  So, I hold out hope.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, what Lukas had built was a Transistor AM radio.  He had pulled out the Elenco Snap Circuit Kit that his grandparents had given him for his last birthday and independently decided to build the radio, because "It sounded cool."

Indeed, it was.

Yes, this is a Radio

And, the only thing he was interested in listening to on his new radio was a Mariners baseball game.  I think that was mostly for my benefit, but now we were getting the opportunity.  And, I have to say it was the most fun I have had listening to the radio in quite some time.   The novelty of it certainly factored in, but this was something my son had constructed for the both of us to enjoy.

The circuit kit has made for a great gift for Lukas.  He loves to tinker with different project with it.  We had an inkling he would, since he has always been very adept at building things.  Be it Lego's or puzzles, our son gets extremely excited whenever he gets the chance to construct something cool.

This particular kit should keep him busy for quite some time too.  In fact, there are quite a few projects in the deluxe kit.  The radio was project #623.

I think there are actually more than 692 projects too

This obviously begs the question "How the heck did they design 622 projects before they thought of making a radio?"  I'm not sure what the answer to that question is, but I'm certainly glad that someone decided to design a radio project.

The manual says AGE 8-80.  Lukas is 6, so I might have to talk with the folks at Elenco about revising that, but I'm sure glad that he is into these types of project at this earlier than normal age.

Because, if he wasn't, we would not have had this father/son/baseball bonding moment together.  

Sure, it doesn't quite live up to another Mariners moment we shared together, but this one may actually be cooler because my 6 year old followed some complex instructions all on his own.  

And was excited to share a baseball moment with his old man.  

You don't get much better than that.