Mora Academy · Physics
Lights and Buttons
Suggested age: Ages 4 to 8
Press Fram’s magic buttons and build circuits to turn on the light.
A wire carries electricity. If you press the button, the light turns on; tap it again and it turns off.
If you press the button, what does the light do?
For parents and caregivers
How Lights and Buttons helps your child develop
Computers think with very simple ideas: a light that turns on or off depending on the buttons you press. This game introduces those ideas, and how an electric circuit works, with buttons, lights and wires. Here is how it is played, what it builds and how to keep going at home.
How to play
In Magic buttons there are eleven cards, like the ones in engineering books for babies, from the simplest to the combined ones: WIRE, NOT, ON AND OFF, SENSOR, TIMER, OR, AND, ALL, ONLY ONE, MEMORY and ALARM. Your child presses the buttons (or makes it night, or opens a door), watches what the light does and answers a question («if you press only the red one, what does the light do?»); then sees what really happens, what it’s for and where they see it every day: the elevator, the fridge, the street lights. In Light it up they build six circuits on a board: placing straight and bent wires, turning them to join the battery to the bulb or the fan, and closing the switch. If the electricity goes all the way around, the light turns on.
What they are learning
The cards are the logic every computer uses (logic gates): with very few rules you can decide whether something happens or not, and memory lets you remember. Predicting before trying is thinking like a scientist. With the circuits they discover that electricity needs a closed path there and back, that a switch opens or closes that path, and they practice spatial orientation as they turn the pieces.
Ideas to keep going at home
- Look for switches at home and ask: what does this button turn on? What happens if you turn it off?
- Play AND and OR with rules: «we go out if it’s sunny AND your homework is done», «we eat fruit OR yogurt».
- With an adult, build a circuit with a battery, wires and a small flashlight bulb.
A tip from Mora: play together for a short while, 5 to 10 minutes, and talk when you finish. Screens work best as a starting point for family conversations rather than as a solo activity: real learning happens in the conversation, which is the heart of the Mora method.