Dave Root's Websites

As a former home-schooling dad, I have been putting together some websites which contain fun and educational activities for kids of all ages.

Hope you like 'em!

This is my online Christian ministry with dozens and dozens of articles and answers to questions that many Christians have wondered about.

If you ever want someone to pray for you or your loved ones, please feel free to send your prayer requests to me at dave@Layhands.com, and I will be praying for you. I look forward to hearing from you!

Also, if you ever have any questions about God, or Jesus, or the Bible, or a particular Christian doctrine, or certain Bible passages, etc., please feel free to send me your questions and I'll do my best to prayerfully answer them.

This website of Cool Science Tricks started out as a fun family project during the Christmas holidays (2005).

We wanted to put together a list of quick/fun/fascinating things to try, such as science experiments or games or puzzles.

The emphasis here is less on explaining the science involved, and more on simply describing some fun and interesting things to do, especially things that make us say "Wow, cool!"

We deliberately chose not to put these activities in any particular order. Instead, as you scroll through each page we hope that various interesting things will catch your eye and that you'll have fun with them!

Card tricks are fun for adults and kids alike, but it can be difficult to perform the sleight-of-hand which many card tricks require. The tricks described here require no sleight-of-hand at all, and this makes it easy for kids to learn and perform them.

Since they are "self-working" or "mathematical" card tricks, it can be a fun and educational exercise for kids to try to figure out why the tricks work! When I was a teenager, one of these card tricks totally stumped my friend and me because we couldn't figure out why it worked every time. After doing the trick over and over I finally had that Aha! experience when I "saw" what makes it work. This website will give you an idea of how to figure out what makes the tricks work so that kids of all ages can experience the thrill of that Aha! moment when they unlock the mysteries of the card tricks!

There are many different programming languages for writing computer software, and one of those languages is called "HTML." HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language," and it is used for creating Web pages (most of the websites on the Internet were written in HTML). It is a good first computer language for kids to learn because it doesn't cost anything, it is fairly simple to understand, and it allows kids to instantly see results when they make changes to their HTML code. It also can be used for creating complex Web pages (especially when combined with JavaScript or VBScript), so it allows for growth as you or your kids dig deeper into Web programming.

There are many wonderful computer games out on the Internet which help teach lots of important skills in fun ways, but it can be difficult trying to find the best free software.

My kids and I have had a great time downloading new software, eagerly anticipating playing the new games, and then weeding out the not-so-good ones from the "keepers." The games listed and reviewed here are some of the better ones that we have come across. My kids both began using the computer when they were two years old, and they both enjoy playing computer games with me (where I use some of the controls and they use some of the other controls). It's actually a good way to have fun, educational family time together, and it helps teach them valuable computer skills, not to mention teaching them about sharing and patience!

When you browse video websites such as YouTube.com, not all of the videos are "family-friendly." Therefore, my 12-year-old son Michael and I decided to make our own fun library of fascinating/amazing/interesting videos which are all clean and family-safe.

If you know of any other fun and fascinating family-friendly videos, send us a link to them at dave@Layhands.com!

When we don't use our math skills very often, we forget how to figure certain things out!

My 6th-grade son Michael and I have been putting together these "Math Reminders" as a quick visual aid to help kids and grown-ups recall some basic math facts.

Kids of all ages find knots to be fun and fascinating, and this website provides step-by-step instructions for tying dozens of useful knots. Knots can also be very important (such as when we are faced with a life-saving situation), so this website offers a lot of useful information about how to tie knots properly and which knots might be the best or safest for different situations.

This website contains a lot of free software that I have written just for fun over the years. You'll find some games and puzzles which (hopefully!) are fun and which stimulate hand-eye coordination or logical thought processes, as well as some screen savers and some utilities which I use fairly frequently.

This website also contains free Visual Basic 6.0 code for creating your own screen savers. You'll learn how to use VB graphics commands for drawing lines, circles, rectangles, and so on, and it includes the graphics routines for some of the free screen savers that can be downloaded here.

If you enjoy watching baseball games, then using a scoresheet can add an extra dimension to the game. Scoresheets enable you to look back at what happened in previous innings and previous at-bats, they allow you to keep various statistics if you desire, and so on.

If you sometimes watch baseball games with friends or loved ones, but you don't really care much for baseball, then using a scoresheet can make the game more interesting and enjoyable. It gives you something to do to pass the time, and you might find that suddenly you're the "expert" when people start checking with you to see what happened earlier in the game!

Try videotaping a baseball game on TV and then showing your kids how to use a scoresheet to keep track of the game. This is a clean and fun family activity to do together!

Many people have created some nice scoresheets (for lots of examples, see BaseballScorecard.com), but they are mostly variations on a standard method of scoring baseball. Visual Baseball is a different concept than most other scoresheets, and it provides more visual information "at a glance" than most other scoresheets (which is why it's called Visual Baseball).