Read Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share for Free Online Page A

ships made by your trusty droid.
    Lord of the Rings: The game could be a quest from the deep and rich history of Middle Earth, where the four races—Hobbits, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves—are all trying to discover a way to the lost island of Númenor. Cards could represent magic bonuses or detrimental spells cast by Morgoth or attacks by the Orcs.
    A Spy Game: Maybe each player is a superspy—James Bond, Jason Bourne, and so on—all trying to recover a vital piece of intelligence hidden in a secret place.
    Or Battlestar Galactica , Chronicles of Narnia , Star Trek , Harry Potter . . . whatever you and your family love!
    An Even Cooler Idea!
    I’ve given you the basics to create a playable game. But you can do more! Adjust the game however you like. Print the board on 11-by-17-inch paper or cover your pool table with butcher paper and draw it out BIG. Even consider using cloth pens and drawing the board on a white bedsheet that can be folded up and reused. Add spaces with special properties. Add cards that do more/different things. Use different dice.
    Adjust your ratio of larger and smaller pieces to make the game more playable for younger children or more challenging to older ones. A reasonable bridge can be made with three pieces, if they’re of the right size. But for a longer, more inventive game, the use of no LEGO bricks over two studs by eight studs would force some interesting construction and would result in more time spent on the Outer Path and individual Trails.
    If you have LEGO bricks and LEGO minifigs (the little people in LEGO sets), use those. But K’NEX or Lincoln Logs or other generic building sets are also cool for the building part. And then have fun using other toys you have lying around. The first time we play-tested the game, there was a Doctor Who figure and the Flash in the mix.
    Even better, use whatever theme for the game you want. It could be fantasy (create your own Lord of the Rings epic quest) or science fiction (a race across space to claim a new home world for your species) or the ancient world (be the first to bridge the great rivers and claim the throne). Whatever you want!

Electronic Origami

    O rigami is an artistic tradition dating back at least 1,300 years (and probably more), and while it’s steeped in the naturalistic aesthetic tradition of Japanese culture, it has held an appeal for geeks as well. Perhaps it’s because of the link to Japanese culture. After all, geeks have a passion for manga and mecha and all things ninja. Maybe geeks appreciate the balance of the technical and the artistic. Case in point, I was the “president” of the Origami Club in my high school, and all the members were my buddies from playing D&D and taking AP Physics.
    So origami can be something really fun to share with our kids, especially when they are younger. It’s about the least expensive art/ craft you can try, and it involves enormous creativity and imagination. And if your kids balk at the idea that folding paper into animals can be cool, just tell them to think of it as making their own action figures, and promise you’ll act out Pokémon battles with them when they’re done.
    But how can we make origami even geekier?
    I was browsing the aisles at my local electronics warehouse one day, looking at parts and pieces, and I noticed a very interesting item called a CircuitWriter pen. If you remember those glitter pens that everyone loved to use in junior high school, this is the same idea. But the material is actually silver, in a suspension of acetone, resin, and a few other chemicals with big names. You can use the pen to draw basic electrical circuits or fix broken traces without having to etch or solder; its ink works just like the thin conductive material on a circuit board, and will conduct electricity.
    That got me to thinking: What else could you draw on to make a circuit? What about paper? Could you draw a circuit on paper and, say, run an LED from a battery? And, if you could do