Dad Labs: Couch Forts

Transcript: [Man #1] Today’s episode of Dad Labs comes directly from a couch fort and I have some of the best fort builders in the world here with me today, hey guys how you doing?
[Kids] Fine!
[Man #1] What makes a really good fort?
[Kids] Darkness
[Man#1] And you like team work, tell me more about that, what do you mean about team work?
[Kids] Like everyone helps each other and everyone gets to be in
[Man#1]  What happens when you are building a fort?  What can go wrong?
[Kids]  Put too much weight on things and it could break, yeah collapse when your in there.  
[Man#1]  They can collapse, well that's a really good starting point for us to start talking about three helpful hints to make your couch forts  more stable.
[Man #1]  Hint number one, when you start building couch forts with your kids utilize walls and other pieces of furniture.  When you leave cushions against them your overall couch fort  will be much more stable.  Will you tell me what your doing here?
[Kids]  Oh, I’m building a wall that is tied together.
[Man#1] What does tied together mean
[Kids] Oh, it means I put it like this so the crack is covered
[Man#1] Oh, I see, every next row goes over the crack, so make sure you straddle that so the whole wall does fall apart. Yeah, look at that.  You are pushing really hard and it’s barely falling over, yeah.  And what does we call this method?
[Kids]  Tying things together
[Man #1]  Hint number two when we build things as humans, for some reason we tend to do matches.  One to one and one to one but this creates an area where things aren’t aren’t tied together and look what happens, things fall. Instead if you were to tie those two piece together they would stay together.
That brings us to hint number three which is the weight of the blanket or sheet you put on top, really does matter. A heavy blanket actually serves to tie things together, like we talked about in hint number two. I often fine for kids, its often hard to manipulate so
I recommend a light sheet and when they are working as a team, without you they can actually put it on top of the fort. Which is a great opportunity to discuss a toy we discovered, its called fortamajig. It’s a light weight nylon that you can build forts out of either with or with out couch curtains. And I am going to challenge these kids right now to take this fortamajig tarp and use it to build the rest of their fort, you read?
[Kids] Yeah!
[Man #1] Alright, let’s give this a try. Now notice one thing that they are going to have the most forts don’t have is that its got these little ties on it that they are going to integrate into their construction. Fortamajig also makes these individual pieces these squares called Connectables and they are great when you have kids working together because it gives each kid, his or her own piece. Wow, that is one really cool fort. And finally taking forts to the next level is a product called crazy forts. Its a construction tool with green sticks that are like tent poles and these balls with various holes in them to allow the construction of igloos, houses, tunnels, and more. And you can put a sheet or a Fortamajig on top of them. They have a cool addition called a fort light that sticks right into the ball and since they are made of LED technology, its cool to the touch. Best of all it shuts off in twenty minutes saving the battery. Well, that’s all this week from Dad Labs. A big thanks to our fort builders and all the hints that you guys gave. If you have some ideas about builders go over to Dadlabs.com or ManoftheHouse.com and participate in the conversation. We’ll see you next time.