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Daddy Troy: 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!
Daddy Troy: What makes a really good fort?
Kids: Darkness
Daddy
Troy: 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
Daddy Troy: 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.
Daddy Troy: 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.
Daddy Troy: 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.
Daddy Troy: What does tied together mean
Kids: Oh, it means I put it like this so
the crack is covered
Daddy Troy: 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
Daddy Troy: 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!
Daddy Troy: 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.