Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share by Chris Anderson, Ken Denmead Page B
Authors: Chris Anderson, Ken Denmead
Tags: General, Family & Relationships, science, Fathers and sons, Parenting, Games, Crafts & Hobbies, Fatherhood, Boys, Activities, Experiments & Projects, Handicraft for Boys, Amusements
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or the kids will go back to the couch. But if you casually toss a lit firefly on the table and instruct them to stay out of the bag with the rest of the materials, they’ll have ten of them glowing before you come back from the restroom.
This project teaches some basic lessons about electronics as well. When I made these with my own kids, they started testing multiple LEDs on the same battery. Luck (and some bent LED leads) taught them that switching the power on and off is the result of the proper contact being made between LED leads and the appropriate positive or negative side of the battery.
Once you’ve created your all-season fireflies together, send your kids out into the backyard and enjoy the fun as they run around in the dark holding the fireflies aloft.
An Even Geekier Idea!
Grab some multi-LEDs and switch the polarity. They’ll switch colors.
Make “throwies” by adding a rare-earth magnet to your firefly, taped to the battery. Then walk around at dusk tossing them at road signs and light poles.
Put a firefly in an empty wide-mouth drink bottle and make a garden lamp. No glass jars are required.
Tape your fireflies to cheap balsa-wood gliders and toss them around the backyard.
This project is painfully simple, requiring almost no skill and very little cash to achieve an experience to spark the imagination. You just need inspiration to pull the project off. But inspiration can go a long way.
Video Games That Come to Life
W e all have video game machines in our homes. And the games—adventures and shooters and platformers and simulations—are wonderful sources for our kids to learn how to meet challenges, solve puzzles, think logically, formulate critical observations, engage in team play, and even understand basic science and math. The games can be great ways to learn the nuance of sports and military strategy. But even if you have Wii Fit, playing video games isn’t a true substitute for going outside and exercising, not to mention playing with friends in the fresh air.
So, as the GeekDads who love to spend hours tethered to a game console that we are, how do we encourage our kids to turn off the machines, get outside, and play the way people did before the Atari 2600 and rampant childhood obesity came along (not that I’m linking the two . . .)? Here’s one good idea: Make the games they play outside versions of the games they play inside.
The easiest video games to re-create outside, of course, are sports video games. Why tell your kids to go out and play some Wiffle ball or flag football when you can get them excited about trying MLB2k9 Home Edition or Madden Backyard? The goal is to play to their imaginations. Plain old baseball or football is boring, but add the concept of the video game to it, and then it gets interesting.
What does that entail? Good question! What is it that makes the games cool? Usually it’s a matter of playing your favorite teams and players, working the strategies, and maybe the career mode parts of the game that let you act as a team owner, trading players and building your franchise. So why not put some of that into the outdoor games? Can you imagine setting up the rules for picking players and teams? Maybe you set up football play or baseball pitch cards that add an element of the video game play to the yard game. For example, each team in a football game gets to draw a number of predefined play cards and use them to pick the plays they run, offensively and defensively each down.
Or use proper rosters for each side to pick from, so that the kids can play a certain player with special skills pulled from their current game stats. And use the games to help teach the kids about the strategies of the games—what are the right defensive plays in football to react to a given offensive pattern, or what’s the best time to bunt or sacrifice in baseball? Just relate everything back to the video game so that each way of playing the sport becomes a reinforcement for
This project teaches some basic lessons about electronics as well. When I made these with my own kids, they started testing multiple LEDs on the same battery. Luck (and some bent LED leads) taught them that switching the power on and off is the result of the proper contact being made between LED leads and the appropriate positive or negative side of the battery.
Once you’ve created your all-season fireflies together, send your kids out into the backyard and enjoy the fun as they run around in the dark holding the fireflies aloft.
An Even Geekier Idea!
Grab some multi-LEDs and switch the polarity. They’ll switch colors.
Make “throwies” by adding a rare-earth magnet to your firefly, taped to the battery. Then walk around at dusk tossing them at road signs and light poles.
Put a firefly in an empty wide-mouth drink bottle and make a garden lamp. No glass jars are required.
Tape your fireflies to cheap balsa-wood gliders and toss them around the backyard.
This project is painfully simple, requiring almost no skill and very little cash to achieve an experience to spark the imagination. You just need inspiration to pull the project off. But inspiration can go a long way.
Video Games That Come to Life
W e all have video game machines in our homes. And the games—adventures and shooters and platformers and simulations—are wonderful sources for our kids to learn how to meet challenges, solve puzzles, think logically, formulate critical observations, engage in team play, and even understand basic science and math. The games can be great ways to learn the nuance of sports and military strategy. But even if you have Wii Fit, playing video games isn’t a true substitute for going outside and exercising, not to mention playing with friends in the fresh air.
So, as the GeekDads who love to spend hours tethered to a game console that we are, how do we encourage our kids to turn off the machines, get outside, and play the way people did before the Atari 2600 and rampant childhood obesity came along (not that I’m linking the two . . .)? Here’s one good idea: Make the games they play outside versions of the games they play inside.
The easiest video games to re-create outside, of course, are sports video games. Why tell your kids to go out and play some Wiffle ball or flag football when you can get them excited about trying MLB2k9 Home Edition or Madden Backyard? The goal is to play to their imaginations. Plain old baseball or football is boring, but add the concept of the video game to it, and then it gets interesting.
What does that entail? Good question! What is it that makes the games cool? Usually it’s a matter of playing your favorite teams and players, working the strategies, and maybe the career mode parts of the game that let you act as a team owner, trading players and building your franchise. So why not put some of that into the outdoor games? Can you imagine setting up the rules for picking players and teams? Maybe you set up football play or baseball pitch cards that add an element of the video game play to the yard game. For example, each team in a football game gets to draw a number of predefined play cards and use them to pick the plays they run, offensively and defensively each down.
Or use proper rosters for each side to pick from, so that the kids can play a certain player with special skills pulled from their current game stats. And use the games to help teach the kids about the strategies of the games—what are the right defensive plays in football to react to a given offensive pattern, or what’s the best time to bunt or sacrifice in baseball? Just relate everything back to the video game so that each way of playing the sport becomes a reinforcement for
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