Every year Members 1st FCU invites associates to bring their kid to work to learn about Members 1st FCU and participate in activities organized by associates. Each associates that volunteers helps put together a little activity for the children highlighting a business unit.

• Tele-branch
• Security
• Learn about being a Teller
• Data Center Tour
• Computer lab activity (That's Me)

Over the past few years I did not participate for one reason or another (even though I should have looking back), but this year was the year. While judging a middle school computer fair there was an excellent presentation about the Makey Makey (video) by an employee at Ritter Insurance showing how you could make controllers with alligator clips and a computer.

The day after seeing that awesome presentation I brought the idea to the IT kids day group and thought it would be a good fit for the IT based activity. The group began pondering and googling of potential activities. We came up with four stations where the kids would assemble a makey makey and play with their creation.

Mario Doh!

The first station was ran by Jessica Hutchinson where the kids would create and assemble a video game controller using either Play Doh ® or drawing a controller using a thick pencil.

The kids really enjoyed this station (was voted most popular) since it allowed them to build and play a video game!

game

Bongo

The next station was ran by Evania Mans. This station involved taking the Makey Makey and creating a pair of bongo drums by jamming the alligator clips into the fruit.

(This action shot was staged, pretend it has the bongos on the screen and the clips are actually hooked up)

game

Banana Piano

The banana piano station was ran by Mark Coleman - (Me). This station allowed the kids to assemble a piano and use the bananas as keys on the keyboard. Looking back at the station it was a bit of a challenge for the kids to open the clips to attach to the banana. It was actually easier to just jab them into the banana instead.

The fully functional banana piano is pictured below. I could not be out done by the Mario Station which meant I loaded up Pac Man, however playing pac man with bananas is surprisingly difficult.

piano
pac man

Flower Power

The last station was ran by Rene Payo which had the kids build a piano style controller but it used flowers to activate the piano.

We didn't have real flowers to use so we had to do a bit of improvisation to get things working correctly

Piano

Kids day this year went amazingly and I wish I had enough ambition and motivation as the other volunteers to do it in years past, they truly are winners as I just tagged along this year to experience the joy in helping kids learn.