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This is why I run all my power cables through that innocuous grey "network interface box" outside. All the phone lines are rerouted way prior to the grey box, where it hits the house at the roof, so you can't kill of my alarm system. Also put a screamer alarm in your NIC box for laughs. You get an FM transmitter that goes inside the earpiece of an old landline phone for $20 at like hobbytronics. http://www.hobbytron.com/fm-wireless-phone-telephone-transmitter.html The parts are only about $1 tho.

Depending upon the age of the child, you might want to consider the Snap Circuits line of electronics learning kits. I got the 500-in-one Pro version for my seven-year-old (now nine), and it worked out quite well.

The thing comes as a flat clear plastic board with little nubs on it, like Lego. Then there are a number of flat snap-on pieces with various electronics components on them. Included are just about anything you could imagine, up to and including some specialized DSP chips to help the kids experiment with weird sounds.

The booklet(s) that come with the kit are quite detailed. They go over how to build a circuit, and encourage the child to try and figure out what's going to happen before they actually put the pieces together. Then it goes on to describe what's happening in good simple language.

It's hard to gauge exactly how much my son has learned from this set, but I think he's got some of the basic ideas down, and it should help a bit when he gets older and starts dealing with more of the real thing. I highly recommend it for the younger children, not least of which for the party-colored pieces and ease of assembly and disassembly.

I am a parent of a 10 year old boy and 7 year old girl. My son and I coded our first BASIC stamp robot (Parallax Boe-Bot) last year. He has since taken an interest in his 300-in-1 electronics kit, and modifying the games he plays on his Knoppix for Kids distribution (he often runs that over the Fedora and Ubuntu distros also available in the house). A few days ago he asked me how a web site works, so I am going to teach him a little html this weekend.

My daughter plays the piano and has access to a MIDI keyboard. She and I have had a couple conversations about MIDI and was fascinated by the paper pipe organ we built. I just started designing a small, networked, pipe organ with the hope of demonstrating some programming and networking concepts to her.

We have also built rockets, a trebuchet, and even kept bees together. I plan on dusting off my homebrew equipment soon.

Children are never bored by the possibilities of technology. They need only to be exposed to something more than closed and highly polished consumer products. Even THAT is a wonderful lesson in repurposing if there is a hack around who cares to show them.

...here

A quick google for "remote control submarine" will get you a lot of relevant links. A scale model may not be what you're looking for, but it will get you a lot of useful information on what you can do, and where to start.

For only $39.95 you can have a cross platform (apple, windows, linux, hell anything that has line out for that case) FM transmitter. http://www.hobbytron.com/HI-FI-Stereo-FM-Transmitt er.html Or find many more here... http://www.google.com/search?q=fm+transmitter ... all cross platform... and all cheap.

Hours of fun playing around with basic-level electronics, and you get to learn some stuff too!

You used to see them all the time at Radio Shack and other stores, but I haven't seen one in person in over a decade. There are also different "sizes", but I can't recall what they are.

Using a 1-watt fm radio transmitter like this one:

http://www.hobbytron.com/1-watt-fm-transmitter.htm l

This is the best approach I can think of.

Start with one of these.

Then, with a couple of 20 cm bits of duct tape, attache one of these to the front.

I just followed the Ramsey Electronics link in the main article, and they are all 1-shot-kits that I was recommending against.

I was about to post a link to a radioshack kit when I saw the AMAZING 500-in-1 Electronics Lab in a post on here from Usquebaugh. It's not cheap - $169.65 US - but if your kids take to it, it can easily be more valuable than a semester of math/science/computer courses in college.

If $170 is too steep the same site also has a page here starting at 50-in-1 for $20, 75-in-1 for $24, 200-in-1 for $50, and 300-in-1 for $70. (Note: based strictly on the pictures the 200-in-1 looks better than the 300-in-1?? The 300-in-1 seems to blow alot of space on the switches/dials/speaker, and what is the large white non-descript area in the middle?)