Ready to train with Legendary Yoda, are you?

#ForceFriday is here, which means so is Legendary Yoda, the amazing new toy from Spin Master! Star Wars fans young and old will enjoy training with Yoda to be a Jedi Master, using motions and voice commands to interact with one of the greatest characters of all time. 

Legendary Yoda has 115 different phrases, and we were thrilled to be able to write the toy script for him. In Warrior Mode, Yoda will train you to use a light saber. In Force Mode, you can learn to force push Yoda. In Wisdom Mode, Yoda will answer your pressing questions. 

This is an extraordinary toy for all Padawans. Available now! 

The Biggest News from Toy Fair: Legendary Yoda

I had the great fortune to write the toy script for a fabulous new toy coming out later this year from Spin Master. As I visited him at Toy Fair New York this week, he was sadly behind this door.

I got to see how cool he turned out, but have no pictures to share. Luckily Spin Master just released this new teaser video. Check it out! 

Coming soon from Spin Master... EMBARK ON A PERSONAL JOURNEY TO JEDI MASTERY WITH LEGENDARY YODA. The Star Wars Legendary Yoda interactive robotic toy! Be on the lookout for more details about Legendary Yoda before training beings in Fall 2015! Stay Connected.. http://www.twitter.com/spinmastertoys #LegendaryYoda 

Avast Me Hearties! Welcome to I Spy Pirate Ship

We are thrilled to share the launch of I Spy Pirate Ship, the latest game in Scholastic's I Spy franchise made in partnership with Intel. At Monkey Bar Collective, we have a long history with I Spy games and delighted in bringing this pirate ship to life. 

The game is available for free on devices that have the Intel RealSense 3D camera, which lets kids use a combination of touch and gestures to play. (Jim Parsons can tell you all about the cool tech on Intel's website.) So, kids can lunge their arms to scare an octopus off the plank, open their hands to flash Morse Code, steer the captain's wheel, gesture with a spoon to play a sea shanty, and more. We learned so much by watching kids explore this new technology, delighting in what they could do with a wave of the hand.  

Walk the plank ye scurvy dog ... er ... octopus!

Steer the ship to solve the clue.

Classic I Spy play is all about the riddles. Not only did we get to write all of the riddles, we helped bring the boat to life, propping this amazing ship.

Find all of the hidden objects and pump water out of the leaky bilge.

What can you spy from the crow's nest? Operate the telescope just by moving your head! 

The ship was art directed by Eleanor Shelton, built by Prop Art and photographed by Brian Bloom. Honestly, everyone should get to have that much fun working with such talented people. 

I always have my head in the clouds.

Sharon adjusts the rigging. 

Cannons and other props are added to the armory.

The ship sails the high seas. Avast! I spy a poop deck! 

Snow Level!

All the world’s a game level - especially a snow filled driveway. Sure, it’s more efficient to shovel out methodically. But it’s way more fun to shovel in a maze design. The kids are enthusiastic to pick up their shovels and put their game design skills to work. They run in and around the paths burning off all that cooped up energy, and your game evolves and change as you remove more snow. It’s game over when the driveway is all cleared. Warm up with a hot cocoa power up and you’ve got yourself a great snow day.

Super-Easy, No Mess Tie Dye

Sometimes we're totally up for doing big, messy art projects. And sometimes, like a long weekend with my kids and parents in Woodstock, NY, we're totally not. Fortunately, my mom came prepped with all the supplies we'd need to do our very own, thematically appropriate tie dye for us to do. 

The only supplies needed are Sharpie markers, isopropyl alcohol, and whatever you want to tie dye. We used t-shirts and tea towels. 

Begin by drawing a design on the fabric using your Sharpie. It really adds to the tie dye effect if you put a bunch of different colors side by side. Then, when you have your marker design finished, drip the isopropyl alcohol over your design. You'll immediately see the colors begin to bleed. 

Once you've got the colors running together in a way that you like, toss your creation into the dryer until the alcohol is dry. Now your creation is set! 

Once we tried some basic designs, we used rubber bands to bind the fabric before applying the alcohol to create a more traditional tie dye look. We also made a souvenir Woodstock t-shirt that we liked even more than the ones for sale in town. 

Monkey Dos

• Use an eye dropper if you have one to be more specific with your isopropyl alcohol placement. 
• Combine marker drawing with and without the alcohol added. This lets you leave some areas with a shaper look, like marker letters with tie dye flames coming off of them. 
• After being set in the dryer, wash in cold with dark colors for the first wash. 

A Happy Halloween Hunt

Looking to put a little more play in your Halloween? See if you can find pictures of everything on this list.

We'd love to see what you find. Post your best pics to our Facebook page or tweet them to us using #mbcHalloween. Happy Halloween!

Dr. Frankenstein Meets Your Stuffed Animal Collection

What is it about stuffed animals and their ability to multiply? One day we counted them. In our household of two children, we amassed a collection of 75 stuffed animals. Maybe more. We lost count. The precious stuffies stayed on their beds, but the rest we tucked away in the closet, waiting to see if they'd be missed. 

Time passed, and I remembered seeing two girls at Maker Faire NY last year walking around with stuffed animals they had cobbled together from various stuffed animal parts. It's the perfect way to save the memory of dear childhood toys while saving space at the same time. And the doing part is all the fun. 

We picked a day when my daughter's friend was over to make it extra special, and this could easily work as a party activity. We emptied all of the bags from the closet on the floor and gave the kids one pardon to bestow on any animal they wanted to keep intact. The rest were fair game. 

It's good to have a vision. The kids picked stuffed animals with parts they really wanted to work with. We were sure to use iconic parts. I mean, if you're going to cut up a narwhal, you're going to need to use its horn somewhere. Sometimes the empty carcasses made for some interesting fashion accessories. 

There was some squabbling over the best parts, but then it can become a trading game. I traded a few limbs to my daughter so these fish eyes could be mine. 

Generally, it was easier to hand sew if all of the stuffing was removed. The sewing took patience, and I was glad we left over two hours to finish. Then we re-stuffed, sewed up any remaining holes, and laughed and laughed over our final frankenanimals.

Monkey Dos

• In addition to a discarded stuffed animal collection, you'll need needles, thread, and sharp scissors. It's helpful to have needle threaders so kids can thread their own needles. 
• If you don't have a lot of stuffed animals, consider a potluck party where each kid brings one or two to share. 
• Work over a wood or tile floor. We found that working over carpet meant copious amounts of vacuuming followed by a lint roller to get all the stuffing and threads up.
• Pick one animal to be the base body. It's much easier to swap out heads and limbs than it is to try to construct a body shape from pieces of fabric. 
• When cutting each body part, be sure to leave extra fabric to be able to sew it onto a new body. 
• Try mixing up facial features for hilarious results. 
• Be sure to give your new frankenanimal a new name!

Make Your Own Outdoor Chutes & Ladders

At Monkey Bar, we love it when kids are game designers. One sunny day, my kids and I put our design twist on the classic game, Chutes and Ladders. The main change, we took the game outside and made it big. Really big! We drew our board with chalk on the driveway. It started with one square that we tested to make sure it was big enough for two boys to stand in. That square became the corner of our grid – ten squares wide by ten tall. 

Next came the numbering. This was a bit tricky because we had to remember to step up with the next number at the end of the row. The numbers wrap around rather than start on the same side for each row.  There were a couple of mistakes but we made it up to square 100. 

Now it was time to add the chutes and ladders. This is where the kids’ game design skills started to shine. Ryan, who is four, put a ladder from square one to square 20.  “So when you get a one on the first spin, you won’t be sad because you are really going to 20,” he explained. I never realized that starting on one was such a downer.

Henry, who is seven, added a never-ending loop. Up from 81 to 93 and right back down again from 93 to 81. If you land on either square and you have to run in a circle. But when you get tired you can start over again and go to square one. But don't be sad because it's really 20.  

A chalk smudge in square 10 turned into the fire space. It's too hot to stand on so you go back to one. Which is sends you to 20 so you think it's a bad square but it really moved you ahead 10 spaces.  

Finally we were ready to play. We used the spinner from the board game and passed it around. It worked great! We all landed on the super long ladder and no one got stuck in the loop. The board last a few days until a rainstorm washed it away. Some neighbors even joined in the fun.  Get outside and give it a try.

Monkey Dos

• Color-code the board. We used yellow for the grid and numbers. Green is the ladders and red the chutes. The art gets smudged as you play so the colors helped us remember which lines are chutes and which ones are ladders. 
• Use a broom to smudge/erase mistakes. The boys wanted to use the hose but chalk gets thick and gloppy when it gets wet. Try turning the mistakes into part of the game.
• Use a hand held spinner or other number selector. We thought about making big dice but rolling them would require running off of your square. Staying in place kept the game progressing. 
• “Start” is off of the board so you can land on square one.
• Let little ones figure which number is higher to work out what direction to walk. 
• Try getting older kids to do the math before moving. It worked a few times with my seven year old before he just rolled his eyes and started counting. 
• Try adding squares that ask the player to do something physical such as standing on one foot, jumping as far as you can, or walking backwards. 
• Don't have a lot of room? Draw a small board and use the chalk as game pieces. 

Maker Faire NY in Pictures

We had a blast visiting Maker Faire NY over the weekend, and as usual, were inspired by so many of the cool ideas there. Here's just a little bit of what we loved.

The main floor

A big theme of the day: parts everywhere

Building with mud bricks

Mud man!

Clever 3D idea: interchangeable action figure parts

Creeper sighting

Makerkitty

Making paper circuits with Storefront Science

Part Duchamp, part hip hop

DIY classic: the PVC marshmallow shooter

13-year-old fashion designer Matt Shiels

Inspired to make scrap fashions

Intel LEGO pinball

Always love seeing the Mouse Trap

Avast, a pirate ship!

Kathy Ceceri presents her robotic ideas for young makers

Picked up a copy of Kathy Ceceri's new book

Lobster car!

Genius STEAM idea: drawing with a microscope

Olde timey tech

More olde timey tech

Even more olde timey tech

Pinball classic

Popcade's arcade goodness

It's important for kids to know their gaming basics

Mario in the round!

Recycled puppets

Recycled sculpture

Learning to solder

Tick Tock the Croc

Make Your Own 2048

I love stumbling across tools that make it easy for kids (and grown-ups) to make their own games. If you have gaming friends on Facebook, you're probably no stranger to the game 2048, and addictive puzzle game where you slide numbers across the board to make bigger and bigger numbers. It's very similar to the app Threes. 

This past week I noticed there's now a Robert Downey Jr. edition of the game where you track pics of the actor throughout his career, and a Dr. Who edition where you cycle through the different doctors. These led me to the Make Your Own 2048 tool, which could not be any easier to use. You can simply enter text or upload or find images on the Internet to enter into each number field. This can be numbers, words, illustrations, pictures... whatever you can imagine. For it to make logical sense to your player, though, there should be some kind of logical progression through the sequence.

I tried my hand at making a version called Undecagon (aka Hendecagon aka 11-sided Polygon). You start with a line, then go to two lines, and then progress through polygons with an increasing number of sides.

Give it a try here, and make your own here.