Fun with everyday objects

Be the Coolest Dad on the Block: All of the Tricks, Games, Puzzles and Jokes You Need to Impress Your Kids (and keep them entertained for years to come!)
by Simon Rose, Steve Caplin

An all-encompassing guide to entertaining, amazing, and possibly even educating children, Be the Coolest Dad on the Block provides the perfect excuse to stand on a balloon, play with grated cheese in the microwave, and unroll an entire roll of toilet paper, all in the name of spending time with your kids.

Written by a comedy writer and a cartoonist with thirty years' combined experience as dads, Be the Coolest Dad on the Block is a cornucopia of practical parenting advice, like how to skip stones or teach a kid to ride a bike. It has answers to the pesky questions kids love, such as "Why is the sky blue?" or "Where do babies come from?" And it can help dads entertain large groups of kids with slapstick gags ("burp the alphabet") or cool tricks ("the hole in the head"). Be the Coolest Dad on the Block also contains spooky myths for telling around the campfire and loads of quizzes and jokes for rainy days or endless car rides.

With a range of ideas to suit all situations and sensibilities, Be the Coolest Dad on the Block gives any dad the right stuff to be the wackiest and smartest guy in the room.

Chapter 1

Paper bags, straws, used film canisters, old hats, Ping- Pong balls, empty toilet paper rolls. A treasure trove of tools to be used by the resourceful Dad to amuse, entertain, and instruct even the most world-weary of Internet-age children.

When they're younger, kids will probably use this detritus to build fantasy castles and spaceships. As they become more inquisitive, it's Dad's turn to show them the true potential of these mundane castoffs.

These activities don't require complex construction, or whole afternoons spent knee-deep in modeling clay, polystyrene and sticky-back plastic. (There's plenty of that in a later chapter.) Some are spur-of-the-moment tricks and games. Others require just a little preparation-the chances, for instance, of happening upon a film canister and an indigestion tablet together are, at best, slight; it's wise to start saving these items for a rainy day whenever you come across them.

The ball you can't pick up

You walk toward a ball and reach down for it. But, every time, just as your hand is about to touch the ball, it flies off ahead of you as if it's trying to escape. It looks impressive, but is terribly simple. As you walk toward the ball, pretend to try to grab it at the very moment your foot kicks it away. And if you don't have a ball, use a can.

No more than seven folds

It's not possible to fold a piece of paper in half more than seven times, no matter how big or thin it is. Naturally no child takes this piece of knowledge on trust. They are usually convinced that somehow they will be able to prove the rest of the world wrong with a sheet torn roughly from an exercise book and a firm press or two of a ruler.

As they will soon find, repeated doubling over of the paper means that, generally around the seventh fold, the paper becomes too thick to fold over any more.

Previous generations of children simply accepted this, much as they might accept that the Earth revolves around the sun. More recently, inquisitive minds have discovered that, using enormous sheets of thin paper, seven folds can be bettered.

Indeed, one precocious schoolkid, Britney Gallivan, studied the problem as a math project and found a way to fold paper 12 times. It involves some seriously complicated equations so we'll have to take her word for it.

Fascinating Fact

If you were able to fold a piece of paper a hundredth of an inch thick in half 50 times, it would be so thick that it would reach from here to the Sun!

The hole in your head hat trick

Don't worry, we're not going to suggest a spot of do-it-yourself cranial surgery. But you can convince smaller kids (and exceptionally gullible bigger ones) that you have a hole in the top of your head.

You need a hat with a hard brim. Something like a bowler, a top hat or a fireman's helmet would work well. So too should a bike helmet, though you may need to reverse it.

Stand against a wall with the brim of the hat touching it. Put your finger in your mouth and inflate your cheeks as if you're blowing hard. As you do so, push your head back slightly so that the brim of the hat is pressing gently against the wall. The front of the hat will rise.

After a moment, take out your finger, let the hat drop back and pretend to be really puffed with the exertion. Then do it again. You can even let your audience examine your head for signs of the hole.

Say "cheese," Mr. President

Want to make George Washington smile or frown at your command? Take any dollar bill and fold it backward vertically at the midpoint of his mouth. Fold it forward at each end of his mouth, making a small inverted V the full width of the note.

Without the V needing to be particularly pronounced, if you tilt the top of the banknote toward you, Washington will smirk. Tip it away and he is definitely not amused.

If you worry about exposing your children to temptation by handing them your hard-earned money, this trick can be done with pretty much any photo.

As strong as an egg

An egg? Strong? Indeed it is, amazingly so. Any architect would tell you how strong arches are and that domes are stronger still, which is why they're used in a variety of buildings from igloos to cathedrals.

And what is an egg, if not two domes joined together? Given the ease with which eggs break, you may be skeptical.

So try it. Place an uncooked egg upright into something soft and pliable, such as Silly Putty or a bunched-up tea towel. Put two piles of books of the same height nearby. Use them and the egg as a tripod on which to rest a light but solid sheet, such as a thin baking tray.

Gently place a thick book, then another, then another onto the tray. You and the kids will be surprised just how much weight the egg can bear before giving up the ghost. That's because the dome-like egg distributes the pressure evenly around its shell.

Another surprising example of an egg's strength is to wrap your fingers around one lengthways and squeeze it as hard as you can. If you're of a nervous disposition, you may prefer to do this outside or over the sink. Providing you remove any rings that could fracture the shell, the chances are that you won't be able to break the egg, no matter how hard you try. You can even get one or more children to squash your closed hand with all their might.

It worked for us, but bear in mind that we write and draw for a living, hardly occupations renowned for building up muscle strength. You won't find us of an evening tearing up telephone directories. If you've just returned from dragging a sled to the North Pole, you may succeed where we failed.

Copyright © 2006 by Simon Rose.