Two New Game Books From No Starch
If you’ve got a ‘Minecraft’ fan or a young programmer under your roof or are maybe teaching some tech camps this summer, you’ll want to take a look at these two now-released titles.
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Tag: Camps
History Geek: 1930s Week
Swing dancing! The creation of Superman! Adagio for Strings! Radio Plays! Migrant Mother photojournalism! Heath bars! The Wizard of Oz! Monopoly! Last week I directed a summer camp all about America during the 1930’s.
Continue ReadingSend Your Kids to Game Camp
There are all sorts of camps for kids. There are band camps and scout camps, writing camps and sports camps, boot camps and religious camps. But up until recently, I had no idea there were game camps.
Continue ReadingTechy Visits for Youth – Vancouver, BC Area
Last week, I was lucky enough to take my son on a couple of tours/visits that may interest some of you (with or without children) in the Vancouver BC Area. In particular we visited the Spark Museum (formerly the American …
Continue ReadingSend Your Kids to Game Camp (GeekDad Weekly Rewind)
There are all sorts of camps for kids. There are band camps and scout camps, writing camps and sports camps, boot camps and religious camps. But up until recently, I had no idea there were game camps. It’s a niche …
Continue ReadingSend Your Kids to Game Camp
There are all sorts of camps for kids. There are band camps and scout camps, writing camps and sports camps, boot camps and religious camps. But up until recently, I had no idea there were game camps. It’s a niche …
Continue ReadingIt’s Not Too Early to Think Summer Camp For Geek Kids
As my family heads into the holiday season, I’m faced with creating a plan that will not only keep the four of them busy but, siblings being what they are, keeping them busy enough not to drive each other crazy. …
Continue ReadingCamping In A Caboose
I spent a rather unusual weekend with my boys, Jon and Aidan. Unusual for two reasons: it was warm, short sleeves weather outside (very strange for London, Ontario where it’s more likely I’d be shovelling snow this time of year …
Continue ReadingScience, Summer, Dads and Daughters
“We use a lot of liquid nitrogen. We blow a lot of things up.” You’ve got to love a conversation that includes those two sentences, right? They’re from Linda Abraham-Silver, the president and executive director of the Great Lakes Science …
Continue ReadingAdventure Camps Offer Overnights with the Whales at Seaworld
We’ve actually done a behind-the-scenes tour at SeaWorld San Diego before, and it was the most memorable part of the whole family trip, so I was really interested to see that the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens folks are now offering even bigger experiences for kids at their parks – visits that are more than just seeing the […]
Continue ReadingThe Tinkering School: A Camp for BadDad’s Kids?
Treehugger has an excellent write up about Gever Tulley’s "Tinkering School," a summer camp where kids as young as 7 handle power tools, engines, fire, spears, and boats of their own creation. I’ve wanted my kids to attend this camp since I posted about Tulley’s excellent TED talk "Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your […]
Continue ReadingGeek Squad May Not Be as Evil as You Think
You may have noticed that Best Buy and its in-house technology troubleshooters, Geek Squad, don’t have the best reputations on the web. While they’ve surely earned a certain amount of scorn thrown their way, they also do something that should earn them a measure of praise: They run an inexpensive-to-free summer camp to get kids […]
Continue ReadingZoo Kids
My daughter, Natasha, is eight years old and loves animals; she’s a long-time fan of the Zoo Tycoon video games series, devours books on animals and enjoys publications that frequently feature wildlife, like National Geographic. So it was pretty much a no-brainer when we were leafing through the list of city-run children’s programs here in […]
Continue ReadingA Ceiling Fan For Your Tent
We wrapped up another successful camping season, ending things with a long weekend that featured rain and temperatures dropping to just a degree above freezing. A little cold for my wife’s tastes, but I’d rather be cold than hot when camping any day –cold is easily remedied with a roaring campfire, warm clothes and a […]
Continue ReadingThe Joy, Excitement, and Thrills of Summer Camps…
Yes, my oldest son returned from the last big event this summer – a week away at camp. We discovered several things: The joy of hearing that he showered almost every day. The excitement the indescribable odor wafting from his camp bag. The thrill of finding the shampoo and soap….unopened, in said bag. […]
Continue ReadingOld School Geekdad: Red Cliff, Wisconsin
Our church recently sent 18 people to Red Cliff, Wisconsin on a week-long service project. We went to serve the Red Cliff band of the Ojibwe people. We stained decks, painted a house, installed a screen door, roofed a house, spruced-up their campsite, and helped with their meals-on-wheels program – but we got much, much […]
Continue ReadingBest camp ever….BOOM!
What I would have given to go to this when I was a kid. From BoingBoing: Explosive camp trains demolition kids NPR reports on "explosives camp" in Missouri, where kids are taught to be explosives experts: "Some people like baseball, others like math – I just like to set off bombs," he said. "I figure […]
Continue ReadingRobotics summer camps
Robot Magazine ("The latest in hobby, science and consumer robotics") has a great listing of robotics summer camps around the country in its new issue. From the intro: There are a growing number of summer camps springing up around the nation that teach robotics on an entry level. These are educational venues where young hobbyists […]
Continue ReadingSci/Tech summer camps
Just because we’re geeks doesn’t mean that we’re trying to mold our kids into mini-geeks. The key challenge of being a GeekDad is knowing the difference between your own hobbies and those you share with your kids, and not forcing them to tag along as cover for the former (I write this as a frequent […]
Continue ReadingTinkering Camp
Last year one of our kids was fortunate to attend Tinkering School. It is a one-week long overnight camp run by Gever Tulley and his wife. During the camp the kids make stuff. The camp is run from Tulley’s home in Montara, California, a coastal town just south of San Franciscso. There may be other […]
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