Hacking Toys
Toys are a fantastic source of cheap technology to hack and reuse, as evidenced by the practise of circuit bending mentioned earlier. With the current influx of thousands of very cheap high-tech toys from China, you can build quick ideas with a few noisy cats and a couple of light swords. I have been doing this for a few years to get my students to understand that technology is not scary or difficult to approach. One of my favourite resources is the booklet "Low Tech Sensors and Actuators" by Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer (lowtech.propositions.org.uk). I think that they have perfectly described this technique in that handbook, and I have been using it ever since.

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