Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share (21 page)

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 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.

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.

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.

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.”

M
ore 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.