All that comes with it

It’s a well known fact that children love parties. With their natural abundance of energy, children relish the opportunity to play and meet new people. Of course, as a parent, parties offer plenty of challenges to consider. Whether it’s a dedicated children’s party or a bigger event that has a number of children in attendance, there are certain factors worth considering.

More than just the financial and practical restrains, you should consider aspects such as food, space and party games for kids. These are necessary keep children entertained, occupied and happy. Achieve this and they’re usually more likely to behave, allowing you to enjoy the party atmosphere yourself.

Space

First and foremost, children require space. Even when they’re not running around, it doesn’t hurt to have a dedicated space. This certainly helps if there are a lot of adults around; the sheer size difference alone can provide a physical challenge for adults and children, as well as being intimidating on the latter.

Likewise, having a dedicated space means that other areas aren’t occupied with children; this opens up any location to having more quiet space; something many people may appreciate. Keeping kids together also makes it easier to monitor and keep an eye on them. Let kids wander off and you’ll make more work for yourself.

Entertainment

In addition to a dedicated space, you should also consider organising party games. Not only does this keep the atmosphere fun and cheerful, it keeps children occupied and enjoying themselves together. The games in question will depend on your space and the surrounding area, as well as the nature of the event. It’s easier to arrange entertainment for dedicated children’s parties, such as birthdays, as these are more focused on the children after all.

Food

Finally, don’t forget that children like to eat. Whilst parties typically mean party food, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging some healthy eating. Constantly giving in to the demands of children is not a good idea in the long run, whereas a little encouragement here and there can greatly introduce healthy living for kids. This doesn’t even need to be served at parties but a little bit here and there encourages the idea of healthy food as ‘fun’; it’s not always about having your cake and eating it.

Hopefully, these suggestions should provide a few ideas for those planning parties which involve children. At the very least, they should get you thinking about new ideas for your next party.

School holidays can be stressful things for parents. Stuck indoors for weeks on end, everyone slowly developing cabin fever and driving everyone up the wall. the kids constantly arguing and everyone feeling trapped, irritable, and grumpy Or that’s my memory of the last summer holiday anyhow, although the incessant rain may have had an impact on that.

But even if it doesn’t rain, the holidays can be a stressful time. There are only so many times you can go to the local park or community farm before it all starts feeling like groundhog day. There is all the pressure to have a good time and to keep the children entertained without resorting to TV or video games.

One solution we found was to take periodic short breaks away. Places like Butlins holiday parks provide loads of entertainment for all the family, and put exciting punctuation marks throughout the summer.

And because they are so economical they are pretty kind to the wallet too, which is ever more important these days. My suggestion would be not to have just one 2 week holiday, but 2 shorter ones – or perhaps even three. that way things are kept fresh, both home and away.

Obviously you don’t have to wait until the summer to go either. Butlins also provide great may bank holiday breaks for the children too.

For the kid’s there’s nothing quite like the excitement of loading up the car ready to go away, or the joy of running wild in a new and exciting place.

I have very fond memories of my own childhood holidays – particularly the new friends I would invariably make. Friendships that would burn hotly and end with exchanges of addresses and promises to become pen pals. Other things that hold fond memories are the penny slot machines, the swimming, the board games with my family on evenings, and obviously the shows and the discos which felt like the hight of sophistication at the time. That’s not toi mention trips to the beach or the local attractions.

So this year I’ve got the choice to give my kids all those memories. Or alternatively I could just stay at home and visit the museum with the stuffed badger in it again. Not much contest for really.

As you probably already know, the early years are usually the best time to teach children. This is why it’s a good idea to start talking about dental health from a very early age.

If you’re losing interest already, don’t worry as teaching good dental habits can be great fun. By incorporating the basics of dental hygiene, such as why we need to keep teeth healthy, into crafty activities, you can spend time playing with your kids and teaching them at the same time.

There are loads of arts and crafts activities that you can do with your children that will reinforce the importance of good dental care, without them even realising. Here are the top three dental health activities.

Make a giant healthy smile

What you need:

• Yellow & red paper
• White paint
• Toothbrushes
• Glue
• Child-friendly scissors
• Corn syrup (optional)

Cut the yellow paper into squares as ‘unhealthy’ teeth and create lips using the red paper. Get the children to brush the teeth with the white paint to show how brushing your teeth will keep your teeth nice and healthy. If you do have the corn syrup, mix it with the white paint for an extra-glossy finish.

Collage of smiles

What you need:
• Magazines & newspapers
• Paper
• Glue
• Child-friendly scissors

Spend time going through magazines and newspapers with your children. Get them to pick out the nicest smiles – even animals, cut them out and glue them onto the paper as a collage.

Plate of healthy food

What you need:
• Magazines & newspapers
• Paper
• Glue
• Child-friendly scissors

For a slight twist on the healthy smiles activity, ask the kids to point out the healthy and unhealthy food, cut out all the healthy items and glue them on to a paper plate. When finished, you could stick your plates to the fridge to remind your children about healthy eating and dental care before snacking.

Teaching children about dental health is absolutely essential, but it doesn’t have to be like a lesson at school. By making learning fun with all sorts of arts and crafts, you can make a rainy day more enjoyable and teach them some important lessons at the same time.

We’re currently in somewhat of a dilemma in our house. The high school where my daughter is due to move to in two years has recently been given a damning report by Ofsted, and has been placed in special measures.

This has caused us understandable concern. The main problems highlighted by the report indicate an arrogant leadership that doesn’t listen, and a failure to stretch the more able students who go there.

We’ve heard grumblings from others about these issues before, but this report really formalises the conclusion that all is not right at the school.
The issue is though, what do we do about it. Neighbouring high schools also don’t have wonderful reputations, and so sending our daughter to one of those may be a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

In order to send her to the school that we’d really like (the school that I myself used to go to), we’d have to move. What’s more we’d have to move to an area where the property is significantly more expensive than where we are now.

One of the few things we’ve got going for us financially at the moment is that we are in a position where we don’t have to worry too much about mortgages. The amount we have to repay on ours is relatively small compared to many of our friends. This means one of us has always been able to work part time and minimise the amount of time our kids have had to spend in childcare. In addition it means that if one of us were to lose our jobs then we’d probably be able to scrape by enough on one wage without losing the house.
I miss the days when we didn’t have to worry about these things.

We could probably afford to move to the new area. However we’d lose any kind of financial security for the family, and would spend less time with the kids as we both ramped our work hours up to full time.

Is the prospect of a potentially better education worth the disadvantages that come with having to sacrifice time and money from the family as a whole to pay for it? And who knows if in the time that’s left before my daughter starts high school won’t see a dramatic improvement in the school’s standards anyway – as schools under special measures receive more funding and attention in order to correct the problems.

It’s a very tricky one indeed.

For many parents, the idea of allowing children to watch television can seem scary. ‘Will you be labelled a bad parent?’ and ‘will they get addicted?’ are two of the main worries that parents face, but television doesn’t have to be a bad thing for your children. As long as they are watching age appropriate shows and doing other activities too, it can actually be rather beneficial.

1. Educational Programmes

There are now plenty of programmes on television that are educational for children of all ages. Many of these feature different languages and allow children to pick things up in a fun way, so they don’t even realise they are learning. Far from being mind numbing, these programmes can help increase your child’s knowledge while giving them something to do at the same time.

2. Console Games

There are plenty of games consoles nowadays that require active participation in the game; whether it’s running up and down on the spot or dancing around to their favourite song. There are plenty of fun and active games that are aimed purely at children now, meaning that watching TV can also give your kids the dose of daily exercise they need.

3. Entertainment

If you’re really busy or tired and need a few minutes peace to yourself, letting your children watch half an hour of kids television isn’t going to do them any harm. Everyone needs to be entertained now and again – even we adults enjoy the odd show or two – and children’s TV programmes are designed to give them something stimulating to watch which is entertaining and educational.

4. New Experiences

Television can offer lots of new experiences for children, whether it is learning about a new place that they haven’t visited or learning new numbers or colours. It can also be motivational for children, because they may see other individuals doing something that they then decide that they want to try themselves. This could help them discover a new hobby or set new personal goals, aiding their development in numerous ways.

Televisions really don’t have to be a bad thing for your children; they can get wealth of positive experiences from watching a television without turning into couch potatoes.

It almost pains me to say it, but my love affair with Apple is coming to an end.

For years I was a keen prescriber to the universal motto of all Apple geeks – “once you go Mac, you’ll never go back”.

But then Apple got big. Really big. And it suddenly felt like I wasn’t swimming agains the tide anymore, I was being swept away with it. But more important than any loss of hipster creed was the fact that it started to feel that Apple was just cynically exploiting me (and everyone else). that the company was…. well…. evil.

The biggest syptom of this was when they all but twisted my arm to update the OS on my old creaky iPhone, and then refused to let me go back to my old OS when it became clearly apparent that my phone wasn’t up to the job.

Shocking

So anyway, now it’s approaching time to renew my phone contract and for the first time I’m starting to look outside the cult of apple for my inspiration./

And I must say, the Samsung Galaxy S4 looks pretty nice indeed.

According to the Carphone Warehouse you can get hold of a 16gb Galaxy S4 for just £35 a month on contract, which doesn’t seem bad at all to me considering a sim free version is around £630.

If you want 4G you’re going to have to go with EE however, and their monthly plans start at £56 a month which is a bit more than i could ever really justify spending on a mobile phone.

Unfortunately If I do go with a Samsung Galaxy I’m've no real choice of any provider other than Vodafone, as they are the only provider that actually gets a signal at my house. Which is rather irritating as I have a friend who can get me a company discount at O2.

Such is life.

Someone once told me that the benefit of a dishwasher isn’t that it cleans your crockery – it’s that it gives you somewhere to store all the dirty dishes. As an owner of a very small kitchen I’ve got quite a bit of sympathy for that point of view.

It seems at times that having a dishwasher can be as much work as washing the dishes by hand. you have to load it, scrabble around for the dishwasher tablets, work out what setting to use, wait for 2 hours, unload it, then put everything away.

That’s a lot of work. In fact it’s much work! This is 2013 for goodness sake – where is my robot monkey butler dammit!?!

Plus there is all the hassle of working out which dishwasher detergent you need to use. Should it be the one with the red ball, the one that resolves limescale, or the one that makes your spoons smell of woodland glades?

It’s all very confusing

I however have come up with the ideal solution. Behold my foolproof method of resolving all dishwashing difficulties!

These are scary times. The current economic climate and constantly rising bills makes it very hard for anyone to contemplate putting some money aside.

However it’s still really important to build up some savings for your kids. Especially if you have any ideas of helping them to meet the costs of University (which look like they are only going to get higher).

By starting off savings now you can take advantage of the wonder that is compound interest – which is basically when the interest on your money earns interest itself and so grows even faster. Which is nice

This means that the sooner you can set up some sort of savings account for your child the better, ideally in one of the many isa accounts for children that are available.

We are very lucky in that our kids grandparents have very kindly set each of our kids up with an account each, to which we contribute and also occasionally inject a bit of birthday or christmas cash. In fact it’s got to a point where the kids are substantially better off than we are.

Actually, I wonder if they would prefer a trip to the Caribbean rather than attend university….

The birth of our third child last year hit us pretty hard. It’s one thing to go through those baby years once – but to be suddenly thrust back into that world after I thought I’d escaped them was a bit of a shock to the system.

Sometimes, especially in the parent blogging world, you can get the impression that other people’s parenting worlds are filled with nothing but arts and crafts, bespoke wooden toys, and instagramed photos of babies sleeping through the night. Of course logically you know that this isn’t the case. That it’s all a facard erected to hide the same chaos and insecurity that you’re going through. But even so, you look at your vomit coated shoes and your bomb site house and feel strangely ashamed that you aren’t crocheting flower pot costs or teaching your two year old how to speak Cantonese.

Fiat have recently released a viral video with a funny and refreshingly honest take on fatherhood.

Back in December they did a motherhood video

It’s especially not easy being a parent when your kids don’t sleep and you have to drive them around all night. Like the guy in the video I’m very well acquainted with driving around the neighbourhood listening to radio 4 and preying the little swine drop off soon. I know i’ll miss these days when they are over – but at this moment i think i’d rather the bittersweet nostalgia over the actually having to live it.

Those who have children know how difficult it can be to get the home décor the right blend of stylish and practical. Practical is a feature that needs to be kept in mind, as some aspects of ‘stylish’ are not really compatible with children; however, it is possible to have both, and with careful thought and planning the home can be suitable for all who live in it.

Practical tips

The first thing is to ensure that everything added to the home can be easily cleaned. This ranges from the painted walls to the fabric on the sofa. If it is not practical to replace furniture with items that are easily cleaned then opt for covers or throws that can help to protect it from spills and which can be washed with little problem.

The lighting in a room will need to be secure. If the children are young then it is important to make sure that they cannot fall over cords for table lamps or knock them over. If the lamps cannot be placed safely out of reach then it might be advisable to consider just having wall lights along with the overhead lighting.

Before replacing any items consider if rearranging it could make the room more suitable for children. Put items that could be broken out of their reach and think about putting items such as coffee tables away to create more space. If the living room is large enough consider creating a separate play area for the children so that they have their own space. Other space-saving ideas include extending dining tables. These can be folded back when they are not needed to create more play space. Steps such as these are very budget-friendly.

The child’s room

When it comes to making a home child-friendly then one of the first places to consider will need to be the child’s room. When it comes to décor it is easy to be creative in the child’s room but a good tip is not to get carried away. As a child grows their tastes will change – decorating with a Disney theme is fine but in a couple of years time they will be interested in something else and the homeowner will be left to start again.

Storage is essential for a child’s room. They tend to accumulate far more toys, books and craft paraphernalia than anyone could think possible and it is far easier to keep the room in order if there is plenty of storage. Drawer units, built-in cupboards and under-bed storage should all be considered and having somewhere to put everything could help the child to get into the habit of putting everything away.

Again, paintwork and walls should be easy to clean. Grubby finger marks will appear on a regular basis as well as crayon. To discourage the children from writing on the walls why not add a section that has been painted with blackboard paint? This can be wiped clean and re-used as needed and encourages a bit of creativity too.