Using Google SketchUp to visualize your Kid's Church design.

My wife had figured out a logo she wanted to use for our Kid's Church.  I was wanting to build a 3D type logo to hang on the wall behind the stage.  I was trying to explain to my wife what I wanted to build, but really didn't do a very good job.  I had used Google SketchUp before to import 3D objects into After Effects.  So I thought it would be a great tool to use to visualize the logo.  The best thing about it, is that you can look at the design from any angle.  And yes, I use the Free version.  I have no need for the Pro version.

Here's a few pictures of the logo in SketchUp.

     

So anyway, I'm not going to go into how to use SketchUp.  Google did a great job of providing a ton of videos and help pages on Sketchup.  All the pieces I used for the Logo, were objects that I made.  There is an extensive 3D Warehouse.  That contains tons and tons of models that people have made and shared.  You'll see a lot of those when you see what we did with SketchUp next.

After we had designed the logo, my wife wanted to really change around the Kid's Church room.  It is also used as a kitchen, reception area, but we were given premission to make it look like a kids room.  My wife wanted to be able to visualize what it would look like with all her ideas.  And also she wanted to be able to show our Lead Pastor what her ideas were.  So I thought SketchUp would be perfect for this.

So the first thing we did was go take measurements of everything in the room.  We measured every wall (height and length).  We measured our portable stages.  We measured the doors.  We measured the cabinets/lockers/appliances.  Everything we could.

So I started in SketchUp by creating the basic layout of the room and creating the walls.   Then I found some doors in the 3D Warehouse.  They weren't 100% the size I needed, but they were close enough.  The one thing I've noticed about the 3D Warehouse, is some objects aren't to scale with the other objects.  You'll simply need to scale them up/down to make them fit correctly.



You can see in the above picture all the items we added.  We added the lockers in the back of the room.  We added the appliances in the kitchen part.  We added the folding chairs.  We add the speakers and the video screens.  We added the TV's where our video game station would be.  We added the sound/video station in the back of the room.  The ideas are endless here.  You can find almost anything you need in the 3D Warehouse.  You may not find the exact make/model of speakers, but you'll find some that are close.  And again, this is just for visualization.

Once you get the room designed exactly like you want.  You can create Scenes.



You can find how to make scenes and make a video of the camera moving from scene to scene.   You can simply google search "sketchup fly through scenes" to find some videos with very simple instructions.

Here's the fly through video We made https://vimeo.com/54210764

I'm surely not an expert with SketchUp.  But I'm pretty proud of the results.

The video feels jerky at times, but hey, it is just for providing a way to visualize our ideas.

So my next project was to layout of sanctuary.  I got started, but only ended up doing the stage.  I ran into issues with getting the steps to look right.  Maybe one day I'll finish.

Plinko Game Construction

UPDATE: 08/29/17 - I saw a new Plinko type game at a trade show.  See my new post here:  New Plinko – Pinball Plinko?

 

If you don't want to make your own Plinko, here's some "premade" Plinko type games on Amazon:

White Prize Drop Game

Disk Drop Game

Portable Plinko Game

Midway Monsters Drop Zone Express Customizable Plinko Carnival Game

Prize Drop

 

I had always loved the Plinko game on the Price is Right gameshow.

This youtube clip shows a video of the Plinko game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNd8JaAXHic

We decided to build one for a game in our Kid's church. I google (or bing) searched and found a few people that had built some awesome ones. Some were way to complicated for me. I did get a great idea from one post. And it was to use pegboard. I bought a sheet of pegboard from Home Depot. I got a 2' X 4' board. So that's how big my Plinko board turned out to be. I started with the board and had to decide what to use as the pegs. I ended up using bolts. Mostly because I had a stack of them that seemed to be the perfect size. Figuring out the spacing will kind of depend on the "puck" size you are going to use. The good thing about the pegboard is that you can put your posts (bolts) in and move the puck around and make sure it fits everywhere correctly.



For pucks, we found an interesting solution. You can buy reflectors at Amazon: Blue Reflectors We bought 3 sets. I popped the blue reflectors out of the holders. Each reflector had a "peel and stick" backing. So I removed the paper on each one and stuck two together. This made it reflective on both sides and slick on both sides. It worked perfect. It moved quick and had a nice "pop" when it hit the bolts. But it also wasn't too heavy as to bend/break the bolts.



I also think these Air Hockey pucks would work great: Air Hockey Pucks

I added a few things to the board to complete it. To keep the puck in play, I added teeth shaped boards on each side. To cut these I simply put the board over the edges, and marked the holes (where bolts would go on the edges). Then draw lines between the points and cut them out with a jig saw.



We added a sign at the top. This was a yellow oval sign from Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202256499/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=yellow+oval+sign&storeId=10051

We cut it in half and my wife added the Plinko text.

At the top of the gameboard, make sure you leave enough space for the kids to drop in the pucks. At the bottom, make sure to leave enough space for the landing. We could typically hold three pucks at the bottom in one landing point. We added a piece of wood at the bottom that would hold the pucks in place. Then the wood "swiveled" out of the way to let the pucks drop after the turn. During the first few test runs, I noticed the puck would randomly fly off of the gameboard. To solve this I added a piece of plexiglass to the front of the gameboard. I had some left from a previous project. It was actually part of an old drum shield our church used when we were meeting in the schools.



We just sit the game on a picture/art stand. In the future, if we use it again, I'll probably add some 2X4's for a stand. I like them being totally independant. Where they stand on their own.

If anyone reading this (if anyone does) and makes their own Kid's church games, I would love to see some pictures. I'm always looking for new ideas.

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Matchy Madness Game Construction

When we were at Dry Gulch this year, one of the games they played in chapel was Matchy Madness.  The kids really enjoyed it.   You can see the details of game (and a demo video) on the Seeds blog site:  http://seeds.churchonthemove.com/blog/post/218

We downloaded the files provided by SEEDS and played the game in our Kid's church this past weekend.  While my wife (kid's pastor) may have been happy with the results, I just didn't like the way it played.  It was just a pair of foam boards with 9 laminated pages on each board.  We had some issues getting the pages to stay on the foam board.  I was thinking about an easy way to make a better solution.  So I came up with the following design:



I'm just using standard 4" X 1" X 8' boards.  Pretty much the cheapest thing I could find at Home Depot.  I think they were $1.90 or so each.  Just remember, even though they are listed as 4" X 1", they are actually 3.5" X 3/4" X 8'

Here's the cut list.  For each board it will take three 8 foot boards.



This doesn't include the pieces of wood that will go into the holes or the backing, but we'll get to that later.

I cut my pieces of wood and put them together using my Kreg Jig.  If you haven't used a Kreg jig before, it is by far the easiest way to quickly join two pieces of wood together.  I won't go into to details on how to use it as there is tons of info on the web already.

After I put it together, here is the (partially) finished product:



Here's the same thing, but from the back so you can see the pocket holes that hold the wood together.



The next step is to add a back.  I used some scrap wood for the back.  Doesn't look pretty and the wood doesn't fit exactly, but it covers the empty spots when viewed from the front:

 

Next I cut the inserts (doors, covers, or whatever you want to call them).  In theory they should be 7" X 7", but you'll need to make them 6 7/8" or 6 15/16" so you've got a little wiggle room to get them installed.  Just make them almost 7" X 7" and try them.  If you are like me, every opening will be a little different sized.  Here's mine with the inserts and then with the inserts installed:

  

At this point, the first one is almost finished.  So I sanded the rough/sharp edges, primed and painted it.  If I ever wished for interns this would be the point.  I love creating anything, but I hate putting on primer and hate painting.  But you do what you gotta do.

Here's a picture of one side of the gameboard after painting without the inserts:



Here's the inserts drying:



I had initially wanted to add drawer pulls on the inserts to make it easy to pull them out and insert them into the gameboard, but the cheapest ones I could find were $1 each.  While it doesn't sound like much, I didn't want to add $20 to the build cost.  So I just used screws.  I put them in just far enough to hold, but still have something to hold on to.  You can see one of the inserts with the screw in the above picture.

I added some used 2X4's to make the stand for each gameboard.  My wife added the numbers (actually printed from the SEEDS download).  Overall, it worked out pretty well.

Here's a picture of the game setup in our Kid's room:



Funny thing.  I had been telling my wife about how I planned to do it.  I guess I didn't explain myself very well.  When she saw it for the first time, she said.  Oh I thought the boards would just flip around the reveal the picture (think Wheel of Fortune).  DOH.  Why didn't I think of that.  I actually like that idea much better.  Maybe I'll work on that for a Wheel of MisFortune game in the future.

I'm planning to also put up a couple of posts showing some other games I've built (Wheel of WOW, and Plinko).  I don't have a whole lot of construction photos on some of them, but you'll possibly get some ideas.

Wheel of WOW

If you aren't interested in building your own Game Wheel, here's a couple you can purchase already built from Amazon:

WinSpin 18-inch Round Tabletop Color Prize Wheel

WinSpin 24" Tabletop Spinning Prize Wheel

WinSpin™ 30" Editable Color Prize Wheel

 

 

 

This is a picture of a game we made for Kid's church called Wheel of WOW.



 

It is pretty much made from an old lazy Susan. I'm not sure if it was actually bought at Ikea, but they have pretty much the same one at Ikea.

We painted it and added the nails around the edges. the kids loved using it.

The hardest part was finding the exact center of the circle.  I just turned it really fast, used a pencil and found the point where the pencil head is just sitting there and not drawing a circle.  That was my center.  I drew a line through that point.  Now the circle is divided in half.  Then used a square to draw the perpendicular line.  At this point, it is divided in quarters.  If you only want 4 options for you would be done now.  We wanted to go with 8 options, so we divided them again.  I pretty much just connected the ends of the lines together with a line and took a center point using a ruler.  This allowed me to divide it into eighths.  At this point, you could simply tape off parts of the circle you didn't want to paint and paint one (or more) pie pieces at a time.  We decided to put a while line between each one.  Again just marked off everything else with tape and painted.  We used spray paint as it was the easiest thing to do.  After we had it painted the way we wanted it, we added the nails.  The nails will be used to run against the clicker as well as used by the kids to spin the wheel.  We used nails instead of screws so that it would be easy on the kids fingers.  Most screws are kinda sharp on the threads.  I pre-drilled the holes for the nails.  I was afraid I would split the wood if I didn't predrill.  I used a bit just a hair smaller than the nail.  If you have a drill press, it would be a great time to use it.  If not, just make sure your drill is perpendicular to the wood when you drill the holes.  After you predrill, just hammer the nails in place.  don't go all the way through the wood.  But make sure you put enough of the nail into the wood to make it stable.  The kids put a lot of tourque on these nails when they are spinning (at least the boys do).  Make sure to leave enough of the nail sticking out of the wood to hit the clicker.

For the clicker, I had initially cut a triangle out of a piece of wood.  It looked great, but the wheel didn't spin very well.  The triangle was too heavy.  So next, I tried to go with a tie wrap.  But it was too thin and the well just spun too well and threw the cable tie all over the place.  I happened to find a pretty good solution.  We had used some of the these in our garden.  http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100329230/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=plant+name+labels&storeId=10051

The ones in the link aren't exactly the ones we have.  But you get the idea.  It was thicker than a tie wrap.  This worked perfect.  I cut off the head (part you normally write on) and drilled little holes in the "stem".  I secured it to a piece of wood.  It's hard to tell much from the pictures.  So if you have questions about how its laid out, let me know.



Here's the game in use.  Obviously the kid landed on game.  We typically have some type of "Minute to Win it" game.  I think on this one, he had to keep two balloons in the air for 60 seconds.  Sorry the picture is blurry.