Format: Multi-session unit (about 8 sessions) | Grades: 2–5 | Also offered as: Teacher professional development
During the 2019–2020 school year, the Emerson STEAM club designed and built light-up sculptures controlled by Arduino microcontrollers. Students combined LED lights, a sculpture of their own design, and code that controlled when each light turned on and off. Below is the final project many students completed.
Student sculptures were exhibited at Illinois State University in February and March 2020 as part of Dr. Kelly Gross’s contribution to the ISU Faculty Biennial. See the sculptures in the ISU gallery (slides 45–48).
How the unit unfolded
The unit followed the design process from start to finish. Photos from each session appear below its description.
1. Circuit basics
On September 11, 2019, STEAM club began its sixth year at Emerson. Because Arduino work depends on understanding circuits, we started there. Groups of students defined what a circuit is, practised their observation skills, and built simple circuits using conductive dough, LED lights, and 9V batteries.
2. First Arduino setup. On September 25, each student received an Arduino kit and wired four LEDs to a board preloaded with code that made the lights blink together. As a group, we unpacked that code line by line to begin understanding how Arduino programming works.
Materials: Codebender app (install link)
Starter code preinstalled on each Arduino
3. First code changes. On October 9, students installed the Codebender app and, as a class, changed the code so one LED turned on and the rest followed a second later. Then each student worked to turn the LEDs on one at a time. Builds failed from missing characters, misspellings, and misplaced delays, and some patterns came out differently than intended. Every failure became a lesson in debugging and persistence, and students helped each other think it through. To end the session, Mr. Boden demonstrated a circle of programmed LEDs, showing students the power of code and sparking ideas for their own sculptures.
4. Planning. On October 23, students drew paper mock-ups of their sculptures and wrote out basic code, or ideas for their code.
5. Building. On November 6, students turned their paper plans into foam-core sculptures with LEDs and jumper wires. Wiring takes real fine motor skill and precision: the ground wire goes to the shorter LED lead and the positive wire to the longer one, and the wiring that ends up hidden inside the sculpture gets complex.
6. Programming and finishing. On November 20, students continued building, attached positive and negative wires to their LEDs and Arduino boards, and began programming their own light patterns, using functions to simplify their code. The video below shows a finished sculpture.
Student coding resources
Keyboard shortcuts: Control + A = Select All, Control + C = Copy, Control + V = Paste
12 LEDs and a simple function (instructions)
12 LED’s on and off:
https://codebender.cc/sketch:932885
Helper Function
https://codebender.cc/sketch:932886
Teacher professional development
This unit has become one of our most requested teacher workshops:
- NIU STEAMing It Up Conference (2019): Professional development for educators on building Arduino LED sculptures.
- National Arts Integration and STEAM Conference (July 2026): Our proposal was accepted for one workshop of about 20 teachers. Demand was so high we ran two workshops for 80 teachers.
- IdeaCon, Illinois (2027): Scheduled.
New in 2026: Integrating AI
Since 2019, AI has changed what is possible in the classroom. Our 2026 workshops show teachers how to use a large language model (LLM) as a coding partner for this same project.
We gave an LLM the original starter code that blinks four LEDs. It explained the code line by line, then wrote new light patterns on request: LEDs lighting in sequence to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and a sweeping “Knight Rider” scanner across a straight line of LEDs on pins 2 through 12. It even explained concepts beyond our original lesson, such as dimming LEDs with PWM rather than only switching them on and off.
This gives teachers two powerful uses for AI:
- A tutor for the code. Most elementary teachers are not computer scientists, and they shouldn’t need to be. An LLM can explain what each line does and how Arduinos work, for teachers and students alike.
- A partner for bringing ideas to life. Students describe the light display they imagine, then work with the LLM to code it, test it, and refine it, keeping the design process at the center.
AI in schools is a hotly debated topic. We believe this is one of the most grounded ways to introduce it: inside a hands-on computer science project, where students still plan, build, wire, test, and debug, and AI helps them understand and create rather than doing the work for them.
Standards addressed
- ISTE 1.1.d, Empowered Learner: Understand fundamental technology concepts; choose, use, and troubleshoot technologies.
- ISTE 1.5.c, Computational Thinker: Break problems into parts and develop models to solve them.
- ISTE 1.4.c, Innovative Designer: Develop, test, and refine prototypes in a cyclical design process.
- NGSS 4-PS3-2: Energy can be transferred by electric currents and converted to light.
- NGSS 3-5-ETS1-3: Plan and carry out fair tests to identify aspects of a prototype that can be improved.
To bring this project or workshop to your school, contact steve@rubberbandproject.org.