by Ken Denmead
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
We 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 playing the other. If the kids like playing Wii Sports Golf, then play a golf game on your lawn with Ping-Pong balls, but incorporate real golf rules so the kids actually learn about the game and why the things they see in the video game are done that way.
If your kids and their friends aren’t exactly into the sport simulation games—that much reality can be boring—what about the fun variations available? The Super Mario and Backyard brands of sports video games add all sorts of fun arcade-style features to the traditional sports games, and you can, too. Try playing Wiffle baseball, but make up a set of game cards allowing all sorts of wacky tweaks that the kids can play for themselves or against each other. For example, “All tied up: Next batter must bat one-handed” or “Superspeed: Next base runner may run home from second base to score.” Then for every run scored, a team may pick a card and use it when they deem fit.
Or substitute other items for the equipment in the games. Beach balls and tennis rackets for baseball, brooms and a Wiffle ball for field hockey, or any other variation that makes the game zanier and more yard-friendly is great.
TRY THIS GAME: ULTIMATE OUTDOOR OBSTACLE COURSE
But there’s more. What would make a better outdoor obstacle course type of challenge than Sonic the Hedgehog? If you have a big enough backyard or can use multiple front yards to set up a course, you’re all set.
1. Get a bunch of items—I like wooden embroidery hoops because they’re like the rings in Sonic, and they go for less than a buck apiece at your local crafts store—and set them along a path.
2. Mix it up with some safe and sane obstacles like paint buckets to jump over, or interesting kids’ climbing structures to incorporate (got any large appliance boxes or kiddie pools?).
3. Each kid gets to run the course with you on the stopwatch. (I’ve found that kids have a passion for being timed, no matter what the task.)
4. Scores are tallied as a combination of the number of items picked up and the speed with which the course is finished—just like Sonic collecting rings while speeding through his levels.
If your kids are more into the cops-and-robbers shoot ’em up, just about any of the FPS or combat games could be ported to outdoor play. What kid wouldn’t want to be Master Chief, after all? The biggest challenge with such games, though, is always identifying who actually got hit. How many such games in our childhoods ended in shouting matches of “I GOT YOU” versus “NO YOU DIDN’T!”?
So, one way to solve this in a proper warm summertime game would be to wage a squirt-gun battle with a twist. Kids love to play, but they always want to know who actually won, and they hate subjectivity in any contest, so why not make it easy to know who got hit?
Yes, I know, it’s a squirt-gun battle. Pretty easy to know when you’ve got hit. But how about this: What if it was more about squirt-gun shooting skill? What if we could make a squirt-gun battle as easy to score as a laser-tag battle, without needing to buy all the equipment? All you need are safety pins and Kleenex.
TRY THIS GAME: AQUA TAG
1. Cut out 4-inch squares of Kleenex (colored is better, because it’ll stand out more when it gets wet).
2. Pin these targets to the kids’ clothes.
3. Each kid gets one fill-up of ammo.
4. Set a time limit, and whoever has the most (or any) dry targets at the end wins the round.
5. If you go multiple rounds, and wet clothes would soak the targets before they get shot, try backing the Kleenex with white printer paper or (even better) wax/parchment paper to keep the target dry.
A great alternate to the Kleenex is Alka-Seltzer. Yes, I said Alka-Seltzer. If you’ve got some Alka-Seltzer tablets, a drill, some string, and lots of water, you’ve got all you need for a fun and cool-looking variation.
TRY THIS GAME: FOAM TAG
1. Drill a small hole through the center of an Alka-Seltzer tablet (it works if you’re careful and have the drill bit running when it touches the tablet—too much weight on the tablet will break it).
2. Thread a string through the hole. Make sure the string is long enough to tie around a person’s neck so the Alka-Seltzer can be worn as a necklace.
3. The object of the game is to get the other person’s Alka-Seltzer wet. As the tablet reacts to the water, it will start foaming and eventually fall off the string.
4. The last person with an Alka-Seltzer necklace is the winner. As an alternative, you can divide into teams instead of every-per
son-for-himself. (Special thanks to GeekDad Russ Neumeier for that idea.)
But do you notice the one key thing about both these suggestions? Yeah, they include YOU going out, organizing, and sometimes refereeing the play. While it’s great to physically play with our kids, sometimes it’s just as important to teach them how to play and to help run that play so that everyone gets as much fun out of it as possible. Just like the video games, the play needs to have structure. I think you’ll find kids a lot more eager to go out and play when there’s a clear purpose and well-defined rules than when you just tell them to “go outside and play.”
Fly a Kite at Night
More than two millennia before Bernoulli started learning math, people were building and flying kites. The simplicity of this most basic form of flying machine has entranced both young and old. Anyone with a couple of sticks, some fabric or paper, and some string can spend an afternoon connected to something they have created, and watch it soar with the birds.
And because of the science behind kites (which we understand better in modern times), many geeks over the years have turned their obsessive gazes to them. From stunt and fighting kites, to the kinds you can strap yourself into and actually fly in, there’s a lot of geeky fun to be had playing with kites.
One thing you’ll notice about most kite flying, though—it’s done during the daytime. This makes sense, since the fun of kites is usually in the watching, especially when it comes to the pretty dragon or box kites. And when you’re flying kites with your kids, a big part of the fun is seeing how high they can get (the kites, not the kids). Obviously seeing is the key word there.
But we are GeekDads! We won’t let something silly, like a lack of daylight, stop us from sharing the joy of kite flying with our kids. Indeed, it seems like exactly the kind of challenge for us to overcome and turn into a cool activity, which is what this next project is all about.
This is probably the easiest project in the book, but it is also one with the potentially biggest wow factor, especially with younger kids. Which means it is maximum fun!
STEP 1: Get a kite. You may already have one of these (many geeks and even some non-geeks do). The kite may be as simple as the classic crossbar with a rhombus of fabric stretched across it, or as complex as a fancy box kite. For our geeky purposes, we picked a Star Wars kite!
STEP 2: Get some lights to attach to your kite. You have a lot of options at this stage. The biggest consideration in making your pick is weight versus brightness. Any lights using bigger than AAA batteries are likely to weigh your kite down too much and prevent take-off (although, if you have a large kite and reasonably strong winds, you might be able to get away with a readily available string of battery-powered Christmas lights). In our research, these were some good choices: Peel-n-Stick Magnetic LEDs from www.thinkgeek.com (the only downside—they’re sort of single-use)
Mathmos Wind Lights—Micro-turbine LEDs, also from www.thinkgeek.com (more expensive but reuseable)
Various Arduino-related LEDs from www.makershed.com (geekier and programmable for cool blinky-blinky possibilities)
STEP 3: Attach your lights to your kite. Depending on the lights you choose, you’ll need to pick an appropriate means of attachment. For example, the Wind Lights could easily be attached to crossbeams on your kite, using the small zip ties made for cord management. The magnetic LEDs could be affixed to the fabric by applying a ferrous backing to the other side (though there is a potential for slippage or getting flapped off. Two-sided tape might be better). And the Arduino lights could hang off the crossbars with wires, or even be sewn onto a fabric kite.
STEP 4: Go fly! The challenge here is to find the right mix of conditions and location. You’ll need a late evening or nighttime with enough of a breeze to fly your kite, and a place to fly that’s open enough so you won’t have to worry about not being able to see power lines or trees in the dark. If you’ve got all that, then you’re good to go—so long as you’re also ready to be visited by Project Blue Book once the UFO sightings start pouring in.
Build an Outdoor Movie Theater
One day, I was looking through a catalog that had come in the mail. It featured everything from a ladder to help an arthritic dog climb onto your bed, to a $6,000 coyote skin throw rug. All pretty expensive, pretty useless stuff. And then I found something that wasn’t so useless: an Outdoor Home Theater System.
I thought about it. Lazy summer evenings, sitting back and sipping a cool beverage while the kids ran around catching fireflies and watching a Hollywood blockbuster on a very big screen. These are the moments when vivid, lifetime memories are made. But then I saw the price tag: $3,499 for a projector/DVD combo, two speakers, and a 12-by-6-foot screen. The dream of outdoor movie-watching began to make a hasty retreat.
But before throwing in the towel, I thought I’d explore the idea a little further. What about buying the components on my own? Surely there would be some savings. Sure enough, the catalog listed each component’s maker. So I did a quick Google search and found a buy-it-yourself price of $218 for the speakers, $900 for the combo DVD player/projector, and $1,149 for the collapsible screen. It was still more than two grand. For that price, I could practically take the family to Sundance and watch a week of movies.
It was time to get creative.
For this project, you’ve got to get creative with finding the audio and visual items. Many people will already have a portable DVD player, either as a stand-alone unit or as part of a personal or work laptop. A lot of people already have access to LCD projectors as well, usually used for business presentations. For speakers, you’ll want something that has its own power source, to amplify the movie sound enough to overcome the ambient noise of an outdoor social gathering.
With the audio and visual requirements resolved, the next step is finding a simple solution for the most expensive element of the equation: the screen. The easiest and cheapest would be a large-enough expanse of lightly painted wall without much texture. That will solve the issue for about 10 percent of homeowners, but for everyone with other colors on our exterior walls, or with siding that would defy a smoothly projected image, something else is needed.
What we need is a screen that is not only temporary but lightweight enough to be portable and storable. The idea we came up with was a screen constructed of blackout cloth stretched over a 1.5-inch PVC frame. Blackout cloth was a great solution, offering nearly perfect color and texture for viewing movies.
BUILDING THE FRAME
You’ll want to plan ahead and work with your kid on the frame design, including drawing it out before you go to the hardware store for parts. To start, decide what size screen you want, and then design the frame to accommodate it. For example, if the screen is going to be 5 by 9 feet (what this project is based on, and a good size for most projectors), then the frame will have to be enough bigger that it can contain the screen cloth stretched taut over the frame, using the zip ties around the outside.
The frame will be a rectangle of 1.5-inch PVC and will require at least three vertical and one horizontal cross-braces. Here’s a suggested layout without dimensions (because it’s scalable!):
BUILDING THE SCREEN
The blackout cloth should be doubled over and sewn along the edges for reinforcement. Set grommets around the perimeter every foot or so to connect the fabric to the frame. Lay the cloth over the frame and attach it with zip ties. These allow for fine adjustments to get the fabric as centered as possible.
BUILDING THE BASE
To support the frame, sink 3-foot sections of 2-inch PVC in concrete in three 5-gallon buckets. After the concrete dries, slide the screen frame’s three 1.5-inch PVC legs deep into the 2-inch pipes for support. A couple of eye bolts at the top sides of the frame allow the screen to be secured with rope and stakes like a tent, which prevents it from moving forward and backward in the event of a breeze. And with that, the screen is done!
To be on the safe side, test the setup to make sure everything worked together.
Then you are ready to invite the neighborhood over. My GeekDad suggestion is to kick off the summer by sipping lemonade, eating popcorn, and watching Indiana Jones try to discover the Ark of the Covenant. Happy viewing!
The “Magic” Swing
Being a GeekDad means understanding science and, when possible, incorporating that understanding into everyday teachable moments. Whether it’s chemistry in the kitchen, dynamics on the pool table, or biology in the garden, improving our kids’ knowledge of the world around them is vital.
And an important part of making those teachable moments palatable for them is making science fun. Even when it makes a task a little more complicated, sometimes it’s better to add some cool science—to include a “wow” factor in a mundane project—so that it becomes something more.
This project was inspired by that principle and by the geekfavorite show Mythbusters.
Friction is one of the fundamental components of dynamics, and yet it can be very difficult to explain beyond sandpaper and rub burns. This project offers a surprisingly cool demonstration of the true power of friction by using it to support the weight of a person on a swing (either your kid or yourself . . . or both!).