NASA has recently performed an overhaul of its science website, pulling together all the remarkably varied and useful information into a slick, functional portal. Of note to GeekDads, the NASA Science for Kids section with a wealth of content for young learners, including something that caught my eye: the Earth as Art site, showing some […]
Continue ReadingFray is a quarterly printed book of original non-fiction, each one based on a theme. Fray #1 was titled "Busted – True Stories of Getting Caught in the Act." This time around, they’re getting pretty close to home for our community: Fray is now open for submissions for their second book! The theme is: Geek […]
Continue ReadingMy daughter, Natasha, came home from school last week and she was extremely excited about something her class had done. We’re talking wound up. Once we calmed her down enough to figure out what she was talking about we discovered that her teacher had videotaped her Grade 2 class as each of the students presented […]
Continue ReadingIf you aren’t familiar with the work of award-winning writer Jeff VanderMeer, now is your chance to see what the fuss is about. GeekDad is happy to be able to offer Wired readers a PDF copy of VanderMeer’s upcoming book The Situation, courtesy of PS Publishing (cover artwork by Scott Eagle). Download Situation-Wired-Final.pdf VanderMeer and […]
Continue ReadingHere’s a great one for your web-savvy kids. Google is hosting a contest for school kids to submit new versions of the always artistic Google logo: Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to play around with our homepage logo and see what they come up with. This year we’re […]
Continue ReadingTeacherTube, as you might guess, is a video site with content that teachers (or parents) may find useful. Started in March of last year, the site is a great resource for brushing up on your Earth Science or explaining electromagnetism. Our goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. We seek to […]
Continue ReadingOur friend Amy Cottrell over at GeekParenting.com has put up a nice list of ten great websites for the Geeklets in our household. BrainPOP – This is actually an educational site, but your geeklings won’t ever notice. The award-winning games and fun, animated videos make this a popular choice with school teachers and homeschooling parents. […]
Continue ReadingSome of the coolest things can be found by getting down to the ground and taking a close look at the tiny things that make up our natural world. The Hidden Forest aims to help you identify all the mosses, liverworts, and bryophytes you might come across. Unlike other very good nature I.D. sites (such […]
Continue ReadingThe folks from Bandai recently sent me some of their latest Tamagotchi gear to have a look at. My daughter had one of the previous generation Tamagotchis. You know what these things are right? A little device that resembles a key fob with a small display screen. The Tamagotchi “hatches”, you name the creature, and […]
Continue ReadingOkay….just a bit of fun. I think I’ve done the first mash-up on GeekDad. Way back in August, Ken introduced the Simpsonized Denmeads. He made use of the SimpsonizeMe website. Now that the holidays are fast approaching, another site is making the rounds – Elf Yourself. So, without further delay, I bring you the Dancing […]
Continue ReadingWebkinz are one of those products that make you slap your forehead and wish you’d thought of it first. First you get your child a cute, soft, stuffed animal. Then, presumably with your help, they log into the Webkinz World (Flash) website with the unique code on the animal’s tag, and they can do all […]
Continue ReadingMother Nature is usually very patient when she needs to get something done. Erosion, continental drift, tides, wind, and water all work powerfully to mold and shape the world around us but they work very, very slowly. When she needs to move a mountain in a hurry Mother Nature lights off a volcano. A volcanic […]
Continue ReadingSo, just how much do you remember from high school geography? This is a fun, fast little game that’ll test your reflexes as well as your recollection of capitals and famous places; and maybe you’ll learn a few things as well. But I’d suggest you practice a bit before you challenge your kids! Link, via […]
Continue ReadingOne thing that’s been missing from the GeekDad sidebar for as long as I can remember (meaning: since I joined the blog) is a links list. So, now it is time to compile such a handy compilation of favorite GeekDad resources and time-wasters. Below you will find a preliminary list based upon suggestions from a […]
Continue ReadingWhen I was a kid, we had a monthly ritual. We’d line up at the entrance to the garage, and Dad would set us against the door jamb to measure our height. It was great fun and introduced us to some very basic concepts of time and change: “I’m one inch taller now than I […]
Continue ReadingI found this site, following a chain of links from Parenthacks (thanks, Asha!). Some of you may recall one of my first Geekdad posts had to do with the Ikea bunkbeds we hacked into a cool raised platform-bed setup for our boys. That’s why Ikeahacker is just my kind of website. Even more excuses to […]
Continue ReadingIf you’ve never had a cool science teacher who wasn’t afraid to make a big mess, toss things around, break things, or bring toys to class, then Dr. Carlson is waiting for you. Dr. Carlson’s Science Theater is a series of video podcasts full of hard science covering basic Newtonian physics and chemistry. You may […]
Continue Reading…loves severe weather. My bachelor’s degree is in Meteorology. I got my degree, set out into the wild world, and forecast the weather for six months….hating every single second of it…..but it doesn’t stop me from appreciating fantastic photos of the weather (the more severe, the better). With StumbleUpon, I stumbled upon these pictures of […]
Continue ReadingWith parents braving the vagaries of tourism with younger and younger children, "stroller tours" are all the rage; Philadelphia’s "Constitutional" or Golden Gate Park’s stroller-friendly "exercise walks" are just a couple of the many examples. For families who’d rather roll solo, Bugaboo Daytrips offers stroller-friendly excursions in more than a dozen cities around the world, […]
Continue ReadingAdd this to the list of kid-friendly Flash games out there. My daughter Tasha brought it to my attention –she thinks it’s pretty cool- and I’ve spent more than a few minutes playing around with it myself. This bit of software has helped to heal the wound I suffered when Tasha was finally old enough […]
Continue ReadingWe recently had a rainy weekend interrupt our original plans to go geocaching. Instead, I took inspiration from John Baichtel’s recent posting – Codes For Kids – to introduce my kids to ciphers. Specifically the Number-Grid (or Polybius Square) cipher. The NSA’s CryptoKids website is a great place to help introduce your kids to codes […]
Continue ReadingHere’s a great web script from the pages of DynamicDrive.com that can be used to show the real-time age of a geeklet in days, hours, minutes and seconds. It’s a great curiosity for kids’ (& pets’?) websites and you don’t need to be an uber-web-geek to get it working. All you need to do is […]
Continue ReadingIf you are looking for a great new old way to gather the family together for some wholesome fun, try Old Time Radio (OTR) downloads in mp3. Ask your parents or grandparents what it was like to gather the family around the old Admiral Radio and wait for it to warm up as a world […]
Continue ReadingOne of the pleasures of being a dad is seeing the satisfied nod of understanding on your child’s face after you’ve instantly answered their question. I think my kids think I know everything, which is why nothing rattles me more than when they poke through my omniscience. My 4-year-old recently came up with this stumper: […]
Continue ReadingRoy pointed out this clip. Darth Vader, iPod (black, of course), kid and an illicit light saber…
Continue ReadingA very gratifying response to our call for volunteer GeekDads to help contribute to this site. We’ve had more than 50 strong applicants, and I now have the unwelcome duty of trying to winnow that down to about a dozen, looking for geographic and focus diversity as well as simple GeekDad chops. Here’s the updated […]
Continue ReadingWe’ve had more than 30 people apply to be GeekDads so far, which is great. The feedback has also been helpful. Several people have mentioned that my target of 6-12 posts per day is too much (for the readers, not the writers). To be honest, that number simply came from the standard set by the […]
Continue ReadingWe’re looking for a few more GeekDads to help bring the daily content level up to about 6-12 posts a day. All of us have busy day jobs, so that means that we need to grow our ranks, probably by another 6-10 authors. While we’re at it, we’d like to expand beyond the Bay Area […]
Continue ReadingYou know, GeekDads — you’re not the only ones into gadgets and cool toys. Granted, most of us will see right through “But I thought you really wanted your own Wii remote and nunchuck set!” But a decent proportion of us wouldn’t mind a little something geeky of our own. Adrienne of Baby Toolkit has […]
Continue ReadingI’ve had a number of emails and comments from women feeling a bit left out here, so I’ll take this moment to explain why this site is called GeekDad and not, say, GeekParent, and why we don’t have a parallel Wired site called GeekMom. First, just to avoid any misunderstanding, this isn’t about boys vs […]
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