Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share (11 page)

For our wreath, however, rather than evergreen branches and flowers, we’re going to be a little more environmentally sensitive and repurpose some materials all of us good techie geeks have lying around.

Somewhere in your house, there is a box or basket or plastic tub, and in that tub are cords. They may be extra USB cords, or Fire Wire, or serial, or even parallel. They may be AC adapters or power cords from old computers or monitors or the proprietary data cord that the 2-megapixel camera you bought eight years ago used to connect to your TV to display pictures. There is probably even a handsome selection of component, composite, DVI, and other AV cords, all piled together for that day when you KNOW you’ll need them. Which is why you’ve kept them all.

The first step toward healing is admitting you have a problem.

The next step is to take them all out and braid them into a holiday wreath.

Depending upon how adroit you are at actually braiding odd-size cords, you may wish to cheat a little by going to your local crafts store and purchasing a wire or wood frame that you can braid the cords around. You can use zip ties or even just plain tape to keep them on (an artistic application of electrical tape could provide just the right look).

The important thing is not to make it look organized and evenly assembled; a bit of chaos is good in this case. And if you really want to go that extra step, don’t stop at cords. Just as pretty front door wreaths can have ornaments or other decorations on them, you can do the same with the random technical detritus accumulating around your house: old hard drives, computer mice, webcams, routers, fans, speakers, whatever. Hang them from the wreath and spread the geeky spirit. Add one string of real holiday lights to bring it to life, then hang it on your door and impress the neighbors.

L
ike coloring, finger painting is one of those quintessential childhood creative joys. Well, joyful for the kids, but less so for the parent or teacher who gets to do the cleanup afterward. At the end of the day, however, it’s all about letting your children express themselves so you can end up with an abstract piece of art to hang on the fridge or your cubicle wall for a few months.

But as geeky parents, we’re always looking for a new twist. This is a project perfect for your younger kids, and just right for a summer day or weekend when you need to kill time in a creative way.

On a creative scale, this projects sits somewhere on the line between classic finger painting and Spirograph. The simple idea is to use whatever windup toys you have as the brushes for your painting. But you can take it even further.

The setup is easy. Butcher paper, available at your local craft store, is the easiest canvas. Lay it out on a floor or table to the size you want for your final artwork.

Now, and this is key for this project, you need bumpers. Set up barriers to constrain the toys so they don’t go wandering off the canvas while they’re working. Carpenter’s levels, rulers, and lumber will all work, depending on the required size.

Toy choice is important. You may decide just to use whatever you have lying around. There are quite a lot of windup toys in fast-food kids’ meals these days, so you probably have some of those lying around. But if you want to make this more a techie project, consider looking for the various toy mini robots that have simple sensors on them so they can sense and avoid walls. These will give you maximum painting bang for the buck.

Unless you’re worried about the work of art lasting for all eternity, pick up the cheapest paints you can find at your art store, in a variety of bright colors. Pour a bit of each color into low cups or saucers, and dip the feet or treads of one of the toys into it. Wind it up, then set it down on the paper to start doing its stuff. Repeat with different toys and different colors. Hilarity will ensue.

Of course, one significant concern here is possibility of destroying the toys—you’ll need to wash the paint off the toys if you want to keep them. This is doable with most inexpensive paints; just be careful not to get water in the mechanisms.

I
hate having to hear my kids say, “Are we there yet?” when we’re on a car trip. So I always do my best to keep them entertained. (Okay, fine. The DVD player helps a little, too. . . .) One time, I decided to play a word game with them. Since we’d been playing with lots of superhero figures recently, I figured I’d work with that.

“Let’s play a word game about superheroes,” I said. This got their attention and they stopped fidgeting long enough to show their curiosity. I presented the game: We would go through the whole alphabet and name at least one superhero whose name starts with each letter.
A
. Aquaman. Angel. Apocalypse. Soon we were off and rolling. We thought of Batman, Blue Beetle, and Beast for the letter
B
. Sure, ol’ GeekDad had to help jog their memories at times, but they were sucked into the game quickly and we still play it all the time. Sometimes we use superheroes; other times we try to come up with Super Mario characters.

But the game got me thinking that it would be cool to create one of those ABC picture books, starring superheroes. I didn’t want to make it just for my kids, though. I wanted to make it with them. And that’s exactly what we did.

Collecting the images is your first (and longest) step. You’ll want to get a number of different pictures for each letter. We used one side of a piece of construction paper for each letter. But you could easily use two pages as a spread, which means you’ll need more pics. The easiest way is just to jump online and start searching for superheroes whose names begin with each letter.

There’s no harm in admitting you need some help, so a number of online superhero dictionaries came in handy when I was stuck for some letters or additional characters. These were some of the most helpful for me:

Find a good picture of each character (have your kids help pick out which one they like), save them to your desktop, and then print them on a color printer. You may need to do a little work to resize some of the images, but in the end you’ll have a big stack of printed pictures of colorful, spandex-wearing superheroes. And as long as you’re not planning to sell the book, you don’t have to worry about any copyright issues.

After they’re all printed out, grab your safest kiddie scissors and have your guys go to town cutting out all the characters. The big rule I had was that just about anything goes. If my kids wanted to keep a background on an image, that was fine. If they wanted to cut out only a character’s head, that was cool, too. This was their book, so whatever they wanted was fine with me.