Geek Crafts

Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share by Ken Denmead. Gotham (2010)

As the wife of a geeky man, and mother of some pretty geeky kids, I was really excited and intrigued by this book. My husband loves to do science and electronics projects with the kids, often involving fire, and explosives (with all the safety precautions I assure you!), so I was interested to see whether he and the kids would go for this book.

First thing I noticed about this book is that the projects are non-prescriptive, they are for people who are used to thinking outside the box and making it up as they go along (and because this is a book for geek dads, there is a forum and website where you can share ideas and projects from the book). For example, to make your own board game there is no ‘pattern’ or strict ‘how-to’ do it my way, instead, Ken goes through the process of how and why, giving various options and ideas on how to develop the idea further, but with plenty of examples and lots of helpful hints, this process of developing your board game will be a fun experiment that who knows where it will lead.

I know everyone in my family will love the electronic projects, like electronic origami, the geek wreath and cyborg jack-o-lantern. There are some mad-science cooking experiments, balloon camera and night time kites, obstacle courses and even the science behind compost! We will be having a lot of fun with this book over the holidays – hope you do too!

[PS. Ken Denmead is the editor of the GeekDad blog on wired.com, and has his own website where you can find out more about him, listen to podcasts and watch geeky dad type videos]

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