PicoCricket Kit is a craft kit for the digital age. It includes electronic sensors, motors, sound boxes, connecting cables and a palm-size, battery-powered, programmable computer.

Children as young as 9 can invent interactive jewelry, fanciful creatures that dance, musical sculptures and more, said Mitchel Resnick, an assistant professor of learning research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

Its central tool is PicoBlocks software, a point-and-click, drop-and-drag programming language. It appears like colored puzzle pieces that can be arranged and combined on a computer screen (PC and Mac) with a mouse. Stringing the labeled pieces together into interlocking sequences can create simple or complex commands beamed by a device that plugs into a USB port.