Science careers start with child's play
Punch 'em Out! was created by a team of local middle school girls who call themselves the Kickin' Kangaroos. They plan to enter it in the National ToyChallenge competition April 29 in San Diego.
"We brought the toy to the library to get kids to try it out and let the team know what's good and what's bad about it so they can tweak it," says Pat Redmond, the mother of three of the six team members, twins Chrissy and Karen, 14, and Kelly, 11. The other team members are twins Erin and Kayla Daugherty, 13, of Brighton and 11-year-old Natalie Sanders of Brighton. The Redmonds and Sanders attend St. Joseph School in Howell, and the Daugherty twins are home schooled.
Punch 'em Out! consists of three punching bags that the player must punch when a light goes on. Each bag is mounted on a spring to allow for flexibility, and the springs are connected to telescoping poles. The poles are connected by wires, and the area within the poles is referred to as the ring. Various games allow the player to punch the bags with his or her fists, elbows, knees, feet, hips or a beanbag.
Erin Daugherty says they named themselves the Kickin' Kangaroos because they wanted to think of an animal that punches.
"We all had different ideas about some basic movements like punching that we could expand on," says Erin.
"The fitness part of it makes it fun because it's competitive and fast," says Chrissy Redmond. "You play against yourself, and you can set it at harder levels."
The girls learned to program computers from their parents in order to create Punch 'em Out!
"Learning computer language and to wire and solder was hard," says Natalie. "We've been meeting once a week since school started and now we're having overnights every Friday to finish working on it."
After half a dozen visitors to the library tried out Punch 'em Out!, the verdict was unanimous: They liked it.
The ToyChallenge was founded by Sally Ride Science, Smith College and the toymaker Hasbro to get middle school girls involved in science and engineering. The Redmonds attended a Sally Ride Festival in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2004, and it was soon after that they came up with the idea of a laser jump-rope game they named Hop to It! That toy tied for first place at the final awards competition last June, and the Redmonds won a stay at space camp in Alabama.
"Space camp was really fun, and I was the station specialist," says Kelly Redmond. "We also went on a tour of Hasbro and got to see all the newest toys."