Are you a dad looking for fun family projects and great activities for kids? In this episode of Gear Daddy, Daddy Troy talks with Ken Denmead, author of the book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share". Ken talks about some fun projects including a demolition derby using Legos and radio control and remote control cars. He also shares a project that lets you capture footage from the air using balloons and a Flip camera. Check out the book's website at GeekDadBook.com. Share you thoughts with other parents on this and other projects you've done with your children at DadLabs.com. DadLabs Ep. 641 is brought to you by BabyBjorn.

Daddy Troy: Hey welcome back to gear daddy, I’m your host, Daddy Troy.  Real exciting day today at DadLabs, I’m interviewing Ken Denmead.  He’s the editor of GeekDad.com and he’s got a new book, Geek Dad.  Ken, welcome to the program.  So what would a dad find in this book.  It’s got a lot of projects for dads to do with their kids.  It looks like most the projects can be done in an afternoon.  What’s a good starter project in this book that falls under the Geek Dad rubric?

Ken Denmead:  Well you know the one I’ve gotten the best sort of response out of is the Lego Art Cart Demolition Derby.  It’s based on the concept that sort of like bacon, everything is better with Lego.  You know those $20-$25 dollar art seat cars you can get at Target or Wal-Mart or wherever.   Just take this peal-and-stick stuff that they have now and put them on the sides, front, and back of the art seat car.  And then you stick flat Lego plates on each of the surfaces.  Then they get two minutes in a circle of doom.   I made my doom arena out of ducked taped together pool noodles.  Which works just wonderfully and then they have demolition derby.  After the two minutes are up whoever has the most bricks left on their car, boom, they’re the winner.  

Daddy Troy: I know that in the book you have guides for every project.   For instance, how many times can this project be redone with the materials supplied?   How expensive is it?  What’s the time commitment?    You can just a pick a project  and know what it will entail and that really helps the parent to plan ahead of time. 

Ben Denmead:  Yea, the hope is that most of the projects can be done with stuff you got laying around the house. 

Daddy Troy: I like in the book you have a whole chapter on failure and that’s its ok for some of these things to fail.  Because I think a lot of this stuff the first time you do it  as a dad or a mom it may not work.  How do you work with that with your kids, when you’re doing projects? 

Ben Denmead:  That chapter  all came about was I had the fantastic idea for one of the projects that was going to be in the book.  My older son is in little league and I thought if I could build a pressurized baseball cannon that we could use for chugging fly balls and stuff that would be awesome.  I utterly failed at it.  It totally did not work.  We all know you learn more from your failures than you do your successes and I thought  it was too valuable to leave something like that out of the book. 

Daddy Troy: What is your favorite one, in the whole book, that you did with your family? 

Ben Denmead:  The one that I was happy with the most was launching the flip video camera off a stack of balloons ,and getting footage from a couple hundred feet up in the air.  That was a matter of ok, this is a could idea can I actually get enough balloons to make this work.  Well go out and check on the Internet what is the lifting capacity of helium.  You know do the volume calculations,  approximate the volume of a regular balloon.  Actually, get to the point where I have achieved the balance  I am actually sitting there with the camera and  with the little Styrofoam package I made for the camera with this column of balloons and I have positive lift. 

Daddy Troy: And again  that just shows how smart this book is and what a great learning moment it is for your kids.  The book has its own website as well, right?  What is that?

Ben Denmead:  That is Geekdadbook.com  and where trying really hard there to build a community around the projects in the book where people can come and share their experiences with the projects.

Daddy Troy:  Well thanks so much Ken.  I really appreciate it.  This book is fabulous it’s available in book stores now Geek Dad by Ken Denmead: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share.