When those kids come around this summer complaining that they’re bored, send them to the computer room and load up thefutureschannel.com.

You don’t even need broadband for most of the features at this parent- and kid-friendly education site. Having a broadband connection helps if you want to watch the site’s growing roster of quality movies; the videos cover a vast range of science and math topics. (One example: “What’s it like to fly around Mars?”)

But the real payoff for parents is the volume of interesting do-it-yourself projects there.

Relying either on videos or on downloadable activity charts, the site challenges people with tests like, “What math problems would you face in a company that builds computers?”

Or “If you wanted to build a tree house, where do you start?”

Browse around first, take some notes and get those kids to work building a tree house.