Thanks to everyone who replied...

The project is a very NON-Critical Boy Scout electronics merit badge project. I know I need to teach proper LED current limiting to the Scouts (and I will), as well as OHM's law, capacitors, inductors, transistors, resistors, etc. (oh yea, and Software concepts)

In this case due to time limitations and dollar limits on project costs... I am trying to keep the project as simple as possible. They need to be exposed to soldering and basic electronics. I want to "wet" their appetite for programmable microcontrollers. The kit will be an 8x8 LED matrix with a PIC 2-AA batteries and that's it. It will end up being a neckerchief slide that scrolls a scouting message. I may include two pushbuttons to include a simple game.

Similar to these excellent projects...

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mini...-with-built-i/

http://tinkerlog.com/howto/64pixels/