We placed a compas on a wooden board. Pulled a wire across it with a circuit breaker/push button, so we could turn on and off the power. We then pulled two more wires more than 120⁰ apart (evenly distributed), also with a circuit breaker/push button. We then pushed the buttons alternately, so that the magnetic field changed, and thereby made the compass needle turn around. This is electromagnetism, as Ørsted discovered in 1820. It is used in most electrical appliances we use every day.
We also were so lucky that my dad had a old electric motor model we could test with and examine a coil and a iron core.