DIY Plinko: Great for Carnivals, Birthdays, Church, or Chore Selection

I am in my 13th year of being an educator, and almost all schools have one thing in common: school carnivals. When I taught, each homeroom teacher was responsible for a booth, and the competition was to see which homeroom would bring in the most tickets. Being the "mildly" competitive person that I am, I always inspired my homeroom to think of a booth that would not only win, but win by a long shot. One of my favorite booths from my years of teaching was the Plinko board.

For those of you who may not know what Plinko is, you obviously never spent time as a kid sick at home watching The Price Is Right from 10:00 to 11:00. It's the game where you drop a round or spherical object down a board, and it bounces its way towards a series of chutes at the bottom which label the prizes.

So as my school prepares for its Fall Carnival this year, of course I volunteered to build a Plinko board. Having done it before once or twice, I learned several things that helped make this the best Plinko board ever. The beauty of this is that it cost nothing. I did not spend a penny on it, since all of the pieces were from scrap, the paint was leftover spray paint that I have been looking for ways to get rid of, it only took about three hours, and the time spent with my kids was fantastic. So here we go.

2) Offset the marks for the nails

Cost: $0 (all materials were scrap materials on hand)
Time: about 3 hours from start to finish
Skill level: moderate

1) Decide how large the Plinko board will be. I found a scrap of plywood in the alley that was 33" x 48". I wanted it a little narrower, so I cut it down to 30" x 48".

2) Determine what type of object you will drop down it. Ping pong balls or plastic practice golf balls are my preferred spheres. Measure the width, and add enough additional space so the ball can fit through easily. This will be the spacing between the nails. For the practice golf pall, the ball is 1 3/4" wide, I added 3/4", so my nails are spaced 2 1/2" apart. Draw parallel lines down the board using this spacing. Then, start with the first line and draw marks through the line across using this same spacing.

5) Drill each cross mark

3) You need to offset the nails for the game to work. So on the second line, take half of the spacing and mark that (1 1/4" for my spacing). Now go across the second line and make the marks every 2 1/2".

4) Laying a long straight edge down the board, copy the marks from the first line on every other line (third, fifth, etc.). Each of these cross marks will have a nail sticking out. Then copy the marks from the second line on every other line (fourth, sixth, etc.). You now have the placement of all of the nails. For a 30" x 48" board, I used more than 150 nails.

5) Using a drill bit smaller than the nails that you will use, drill a hole through the board on one of the cross marks. Drive a nail into that hole to ensure that the nail is snug. If the nail is not tight, use a smaller drill bit and test again. Proceed to drill a hole through each of the cross marks. Make sure to drill through the board.

7) Begin nailing into the holes

6) Once all of the holes have been drilled the back side will be quite splintery. Gently scrape all of the splintered wood off (I used a small steel bar for this). Lightly sand the board on both sides.

7) Either on sawhorses or on concrete, drive a nail into each of the holes, being careful not to drive the nail all the way into the board. They need to stick out a little farther than the diameter of your sphere. This is a great time to use a little helper to either hand you nails or practice their nailing skills. For anybody who is Type A and feels that the spacing all needs to be perfect, remember that this is a game of chance and the only necessity is that the ball fits between all of the nails.

9) Ensure that balls cannot get stuck

*Note: the first time I built this I drove the nails all the way through until the head was flush against the board. This meant that the pointy part of the nail was sticking out. Since it was for a carnival and I didn't want a kid to get impaled on my board, I ended up having to buy a sheet of Plexiglas to cover the front. This was quite an expense. Since I wanted to spend $0 on this board, I decided that head of the nails would be safe sticking out and I can skip the cost of the Plexiglas.

10) Create chutes at the bottom.

8) Cut the legs and the pieces for the frame. I used scrap 2" x 4" for the legs and bottom of the board, and 1" x 2" for the sides. Attach these pieces to the board.

9)  Have a small partner practice on the board and make sure that there are no areas where the ball gets stuck. For any of these areas, add extra nails to divert the balls away from the "danger spots." Additionally, look for areas to add places where the ball can land in the middle of the board for high value prizes by adding additional nails to capture the ball. The balls seldom land here because of the way they bounce through the board, hence the high value.

12) Have fun!

10) For the bottom, cut some small scrap for slots where the balls will land. I cut the pieces with 45 degree angles to direct the balls away from the higher value slots. This creates a little more excitement. Attach these chutes to the bottom board, using wider spaces for lower values and narrower spaces for higher values, ensuring that the balls will actually fit into the narrower spaces (unless you want to be really mean).

11) Paint the board. I had seven cans of leftover spray paint from various projects, so I sprayed a background of black. I then lightly sprayed the other colors on top to create some depth to the colors.

12) Have fun.

11) Layered paint

 This is great for carnivals, church activities, or parties. But I also see the possibility for having kids choose their chores with this board. The possibilities are endless. But as is the case with most projects, the bulk of the joy comes in the building, especially with helpers.

For anybody who builds one of these, I would love to have you post pictures and tell me about your experience building it and what you built it for.

Bottom Detail

Parenting Game Changer: Letting Your Kids Help

I love doing projects with my kids, whether it's cooking, building, assembling, constructing, or gardening. As I started a project this past week with and for my son, I started to wonder why I enjoy projects with my kids. Why do I enjoy building furniture with my kids when it takes so much longer with their help? Why is gardening fun with them when I could do it so much more quickly without them? Why is making pancakes more enjoyable when they are creating such a mess? And now is confession time - in the moment these things are not always a lot of fun, and I often don't have the most patience with my kids. So why do I do it? Why do I make my projects more difficult by asking and insisting that my kids participate with me?

1) My kids can learn practical skills. They can learn how to hammer, drill a hole, measure flour, or spread manure. I can teach them how to measure twice, cut once, and then trim, trim, trim until a piece of wood is just the right length. I can teach them tool safety, kitchen safety, and any other kind of safety possible.

2) My kids can teach me patience. It is easier
when I can move at my own speed with any project, but having my kids with me helps me slow down and work on patience.

3) My kids learn to participate in my world, just as I participate in their world when I play with them. As a family, we love doing things together, and for my kids, that means doing things that are important to mommy and daddy just as we do things that are important to them.

4) I enjoy spending time with them. Sure, this is an easy answer. I love spending time with my kids, and having them help me with projects is a way to double dip - get something done while spending time with them. There's nothing wrong with leveraging time, is there?

5) I love them. The times when I am working on something with my kids and their eyes sparkle, they giggle, or they get excited about putting a nail into the peg board, these are the times that I live for.

Is it easy to have my kids participate in every project? No, it really isn't. But is it worth it? Absolutely.

Gluten-Free Chicken Nuggets: Tastier and Healthier

The cast

Our family recently made the Gluten Free move. It was not an easy choice. Part of me wanted to go my whole life without feeling well if it meant that I didn't have to give up pound cake, donuts, hamburger buns, and all of the other wonderful, gluteny things. But part of me wanted to listen to my wife's reason that our kids were having health issues that we could isolate to gluten intolerance. Oh, wonderful gluten, it has been a fun ride, but I must find a way to live without you.

Enter my fabulous wife, who decided that we needed to find a way to continue with some of our favorite family recipes while maintaining the strict gluten free diet. And boy do I love her chicken nuggets. So here is a delicious, easy chicken nugget recipe, made gluten free and entirely from Trader Joe's ingredients (all of which are available from any grocery store, but if you have a Trader Joe's close by, why not go there?).

Ingredients:

- Three large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 4 1/2 cups corn flakes
- plain yogurt (enough to cover chicken, about 1/2 cup
- 1.5 t. garlic powder

The curtain call

- 1.5 t. paprika
- 3/4 t. thyme
- 1/2 t. salt
- grapeseed oil

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2) Cut up the chicken into nugget sized pieces and coat in yogurt (buttermilk may be used, but the thicker the creamy base the better the coating sticks).

3) While the chicken sits in the yogurt, run the cornflakes through a food processor or blender to completely crumble them (note: chewing them to pulverize them makes them soggy, so don't try that. Trust me on this one). Add the other dry ingredients and mix well.

4) Add grapeseed oil to a shallow baking dish to coat the bottom.

5) Plop some of the chicken pieces into the dry mixture and coat well.

The audience's appreciation

6) Put the chicken pieces in the pan to get some oil on the bottom of the pieces and then flip the pieces. The oil on the top and bottom helps to make delicious, crispy nuggets.

7) Bake for 30 minutes, until crispy golden.

8) Ration the amount your kids take or you will not get any.

These are a big hit in our house, so much so that we don't even miss the gluten-heavy mixture that we used in the past. Dare I say it's even better now? Yes, I dare.

So here's to healthier, tastier eating.

Kids Up Close and Personal with Heavy Machinery: A Renaissance Dad Field Trip

Note the OSHA approved closed toe shoes.

I know that almost any parent has had the experience of spending a lot of money on a birthday or Christmas gift for a child, only to have the child find more enjoyment in the box, ribbons, or wrapping. That can sometimes be a frustrating experience. It can be the same with outings. I am glad that we have a zoo membership. Most of the time when we go to the zoo the kids spend more time playing on the playground or on the splash pad, things that cost nothing in most areas around our house. Kids have a wonderful, uncanny knack at finding joy in the simple things in life. Sometimes.

When I take my kids out and about in society, I usually don't want to spend a lot of money entertaining them. And after our umpteenth trip to Lowe's (especially when there are no Build and Grow clinics happening),  we need to find something else to do.

Getting a run down on all of the equipment in the cab

 Enter the CAT plant. In a conversation with a friend of mine, I discovered that her husband worked for CAT. And we just happen to have a CAT plant fairly close to our house. And we also happen to have kids who can name every type of heavy machinery. And light up when they see "working" diggers out and about. And correct library books that incorrectly name parts (like the book that calls backhoe stabilizers "legs", to which my three-year-old always says, "Daddy! Those are stabilizers, not legs. Humph!"). So when I heard that I had a connection to the CAT plant, I decided that it might be time to take a Renaissance Dad field trip.

Big E trying her hand at the wheel loader.

We met our friend early in the morning at the CAT plant. We spent an hour or so getting to see the cabs of the machines, touring the plant, and otherwise getting up close and personal with all kinds of awesomeness. Personally, I contemplated leaving my education career and spending more time around tons of steel and hydraulics and chest pounding toys for big kids. I did have to contemplate this trip and decide if it was really for the kids or if it was just something that I always wanted to do. In the end, I decided that it was something that was for the kids, and a lot of my enjoyment came in their wide-eyed stares, their exploration, and their overall squeals of joy and laughter as they got to play on the equipment that they otherwise just get to see working in the distance.

And the best part about the trip to the CAT plant is that I didn't have to worry about the kids enjoying the empty box more than the experience.

Big A working the mini excavator like a boss!

Now if I could just figure out how to get a mini excavator to play with in my yard...

Little E figuring out the articulated dump truck.

Big E is ready for daddy to rent a skid loader.

The sadness when it is time to leave the CAT plant.

Easy, Inexpensive Repair to a Playhouse Roof

About a year ago our neighbors were getting rid of their playhouse. Their daughter was entering middle school, and they knew that our kids would love playing with it. Boy, do they know our kids. They are constantly in this house, making mud pies, sweeping, decorating, and just playing. I don't know why they love their "chores" in their playhouse so much more than their actual chores.

The playhouse sat with its plastic roof baking in the hot Arizona sun. If you have never experienced Arizona, our sun does wonders for "indestructible" plastic. As the plastic aged, it became brittle. Did I mention that the house also sat under the edge of our lemon tree? So this past winter, as we were shaking lemons off of the tree, plastic shrapnel was flying. I could hear Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" playing every time a lemon landed on the roof and plastic sprayed in the air. By the time the lemon harvest was over, the roof was a roof in the loosest of senses. Something had to be done.

The old roof has seen better days.

I had a package of shingles that was left when we bought the house, and I also had a roll of roofing felt from a shed project that I did years ago. Essentially, I had almost all of the supplies needed to re-roof the kids' playhouse. If only I had some inexpensive labor...

The kids and I started by dismantling the plastic roof. I took care of all of the small, sharp pieces. They took care of the fasteners inside of the house. After about fifteen minutes, the roof was off. I was very happy to see a recycling symbol on the underside of the plastic, so we threw the pieces into our recycling bin and moved on to the construction phase.

Big A diligently unscrewing the old roof.

The next steps were to add horizontal braces for the plywood, screw the plywood into the braces and edge of the house, adhere a drip edge, felt and shingles, and sit back and enjoy. Here's the process in a little more detail:

1) We installed a horizontal cross piece at the apex of the roof using 2 x 2 scrap. This gave us a place to fasten the plywood where it came together.

2) We measured the roof line and cut scrap particle board to fit. We then screwed this down, making sure that the screws went into the existing and newly installed cross pieces. Note - please check the length of the screw. The first screws I used were too long and went through the horizontal pieces. Normally I would be fine with something like this, but my kids' heads go into this playhouse, so I really didn't want the sharp ends of screws sticking down.

3) I installed a drip edge around the perimeter of the roof. This was the only supply that I had to purchase. The drip edge prevents water from running into the edge of the wood roof base.

Such hard workers!

4) I installed the felt using construction adhesive. I didn't want to do anythings with nails, since I kind of like my kids' heads, eyes, noses, and every other part that goes into the playhouse. I didn't want to think about them messing around and smashing into the ends of nails sticking down, so I decided that construction adhesive would be my best friend for this project. I used clamps to keep the edges down while the adhesive was drying.

5) Starting at the bottom edge of the roof, I started installing shingles. I used construction adhesive for these as well. As I got to the end of a row, I cut the last piece with a utility knife to line up with the edge. I then started on that side with the next run, alternating directions.

Installation of the horizontal supports

In total, I spent less than $20 on this project. The kids now have a playhouse that will keep them dry when they're playing in the rain, will keep them in shade when they're playing in the sun, and will keep them safe since they no longer have to play around shards of broken plastic. Aside from all that, the new roof greatly increased the resale value of the house, which is great in the sellers market that we are experiencing right now in Arizona.

Now if I could only get the kids to replace the drapes and change out the faucet.

Plywood and drip edge installed

Last run of shingles clamped and drying

Little E is thrilled with the result!