BEAM Bots
The WSU Robotics club has held BEAM workshops where groups of students, ranging from WSU graduate students to elementary school children, form together to build, solder, construct robotic creations.
A Schematic Drawing of a BEAM bot is available here:
For those which avoid programming, microcontrollers and digital circuitry, there are a class of biology-inspired robots which operate on all-analog circuit designs. A major advantage of BEAM Robots is their relative simplicity. Given a soldering iron and enough time, even elementary school students can construct, test, and learn about robotics, automation, and circuitry.
There are numerous BEAM resources, schematics, and parts kits available on the internet.