Do your kids have an old motorized toy lying around in the toy box? STEM activities can be so easy to create at home for extended learning.

Let me show you how easy it is to re-purpose parts (like the motor) from an old toy and convert it into an engineering project that will impress your kids. My boys call this experiment coloring of the future!

We had a broken circus toy that lit up and spun with the flip of a switch.

My husband helped our boys take this apart so we could use the motor for our coloring bot.

Supplies You Will Need:

• toy motor with attached wiring
• 9 volt battery
• 4 color markers
• electric “alligator” clip
• hot glue sticks and hot glue gun
• electric drill and screw
• plastic cup

Use an old plastic cup, and have one of the parents drill a hole into the bottom of the cup using a screw.

Be careful not to apply to much pressure, as the cup might crack if you do that. Slow and steady.

Insert the motor and it’s attached wires you’ve removed from the toy into the hole you created in the bottom of the cup.

Use a hot glue gun to secure it into place.

Hot glue the 9 volt battery to the cup. We just glued it down right next to the motor.

Add an alligator clip to the wires. This alligator clip will be used as a connector for the motor to the battery.

You can also glue down the wires to the side of the cup if there is a lot of wire hanging and you want to keep it out of the way. This is what we did.

Hot glue the markers onto the side of the cup.

When you’re ready to color, lay down a sheet of paper.

Then remove the lids from the markers and connect the battery and motor and watch it go, go, go!

It will vibrate, jump around a bit and go in circles, coloring all the while.

Want to see it in action? Hop over and see the coloring machine in motion!

Have you ever taken a broken toy and turned it into something else? This is such a great way to use science, engineering, math and technology together!