Stephanie from Little Birds posted this photo of her son Miles’ allowance jars on Flickr. They are marked “Save”, “Spend” and “Give”. The idea is that $1 goes in to each jar, each week.

“spend: use it as you like
save: stays in the jar!
give: for charity. we encourage them to save it up for one cause.” – Stephanie

AJ, who likes to wash her money, only has the one piggy bank at the moment for all her savings but I like this idea so much I think we will be changing to the three-jar system soon.
**Photograph reproduced with Stephanie’s permission**

There are many things to feel happy about when the words “back to school” start being bandied about, and also many things that make your heart grow heavy. Covering school books is probably, for most, in the latter category. But fear not! It can be all sorts of fun. Notebook Magazine shows us the trick to covering school books (above), while Family Fun Magazine suggests a book-covering party might be a good way to turn a tedious activity into something enjoyable, and Martha has lots of bright ideas… of course. Our advice is to involve your kids, break out the stickers, markers, scrapbooking papers and clear plastic and make a day of it (or at least a couple of hours).

Asha from Parent Hacks sent us this great hack

Today is Day 1 of my kids’ school holidays (which, in America, is generally two weeks). And while we’ve got plenty of holiday-related plans with friends and family, there are still many unfilled hours in the days ahead. I, for one, am happy to shelve the backpacks and early mornings for a little while, but I know that, without a little structure to punctuate our pajama-lounging, fireside-reading afternoons, we’ll all go stark raving mad.

Here’s what I did over the summer to balance our free/busy time, and it worked well, so I’m repeating the process in a smaller way for the winter break. I sat down with my kids (7 and 3) and made a list of everything big or little we wanted to do over the break. Everything.
Our list starts out like this:

1. Go to the snow
2. Make a gingerbread house
3. Build a fire in the fireplace
4. Make a pinecone birdfeeder
5. Walk around the neighborhood looking at lights
…

After we had a good list, we took out the wall calendar and penciled each item in. If you have more ideas than days in your vacation — no problem. This is a good exercise in prioritizing. I then decided on a basic rhythm for each day. I hesitate to say “routine” or “schedule” as it’s more flexible than that, but having a predictable sense of what to expect each day makes it so much easier for my kids to transition out of (and back into) school.

In our case, the “rhythm” looks a lot like it does when school’s in session, with the exception of an extra blessed hour of sleep in the morning. The day begins with breakfast, bed-making and tooth- brushing, and is then followed by an activity from the list. Then lunch, quiet time, possibly another short activity, dinner, family playtime, then bed. We try to schedule day-long activities (such as going to the snow) between shorter, at-home activities to maintain our sanity. And we toss the schedule completely when something spontaneous and exciting comes up (impromptu visits, last-minute parties with folks we care about).

I find that mapping out our vacation in this way makes us all happier, and, in the end, better rested and ready for a new year.

Kathreen from Whipup sent along this post on gifts

Every Christmas I love to prepare a small gift for my friends’ and cousins’ children. There is about 20 children involved in this plan so needless to say the gifts must be cheap and easy (hence the title of this post). In the past I have made library bags, small soft pillows with a simple applique pattern, singlets or t-shirts with applique, in the years I didn’t have time to make something I found educational items to be good value, like drawing books with crayons or silver pencils (black note books with silver pencils are excellent or also fat multicoloured pencils are fun too). This year if I had the time I would make little aprons with a wooden spoon in the pocket, but instead I have organised some wooden puzzles and craft kits that I found in bulk on ebay.

Here are some more suggestions (do you have any ideas?) for cheap but good gifts for lots of kids at once.

1. Make something that you know you can make lots of quickly and that will still be good quality (like aprons, bags or cushions), you might be quick at knitting kids beanies or beading bracelets or keyrings.
2. Bargain bulk buys on ebay or your local discount store, such as jigsaw puzzles, educational games, colouring in books, craft kits etc.
3. Make up collage crafting kits of your own – get 20 or so ziplock bags and fill it with collage materials, fancy papers, paddlepop sticks and pipe cleaners, box of crayons or pencils, glue stick and child scissors and small notebook.
4. Learn a craft kit: is your thing knitting or crochet: then get an easy pattern and instructions copy it 20 times, purchase 20 cheap knitting needles or crochet hooks and buy some colourful yarn enough to make the pattern. You can do the same thing if your craft is beading, sewing or printmaking.
5. If you are good at drawing why not draw some simple pictures suitable for colouring in and photocopy or print a few copies and bind together with simple ring binding at your local printer. You might want to include blank pages and activity pages like dot-to-dots and complete-the-picture (eg. my kids love to fill in expressions on blank faces).

Download a helpful brochure from Petnet.com.au promoting responsible dog ownership and dog bite prevention.

Petnet also has a neat little online app called Selectapet for helping you to select the right dog or cat for your family based on the amount of exercise you expect to be able to give your pet, the size of your home and the age of your family members.

Here are a couple of Halloween safety links:

The National Safety Council (US) has some safety tips for parents, kids and motorists for Halloween trick-or-treating.

The Halloween Safety Guide has lots of good ideas for keeping everyone safe and happy on Halloween including tips for those having parties, decorating your yard and keeping pets safe.

Speaking of teddy bears, if you have a child who has an old soft toy which has been loved literally to pieces, I recommend reading this post over at Rainbowcake about patching an old bear. Sage advice and a very touching post.

For another idea on how to patch a soft toy have a look at how Sarah from Material Obsession saved some very loved rabbits.

The above image reproduced with the kind permission of Christina Gordon whose one-off prints rock my socks.

It’s time to knuckle down again and get those assignments knocked over as they start to roll in. I know that large amounts of precious homework time can be wasted or diverted into collecting together the right supplies to start work. Instead, have a medium sized plastic box with a lid (maybe even one on wheels to be rolled away under a table), or drawer set aside which is full of supplies reserved exclusively for homework time.

You will want to include the basics such as lined paper, blank, scissors, pencils, pens, a ruler, sticky tape, graph paper, glue, erasers and a pencil sharpener.

And you could add to this a dictionary, a thesaurus, an atlas, a calculator, highlighter pens, sticky notes, a hole punch, coloured markers and pencils, a stapler, etc.

Younger homeworkers might also need those extra special things for assignments such as glitter-glue, stickers, poster paint, brushes and coloured paper and cardboard.

Perhaps you could go shopping for these special supplies together so that the stationery feels extra special – and remember,the rules are that the contents are for homework time only!

There is a pile of laundry that needs doing, dinner is still a figment of your imagination, there are emails to answer, and a pile of work notes that need going over after the kids are in bed. How on earth does anyone expect you to add in some crafting, exploring, playing, doing, making, cooking, experimenting with the kids? Seriously?

I know. I hear you. Right now AJ is watching more TV than usual, LJ is requiring as many feeds, sleeps and nappy changes as expected and both Phil and I are running on empty.

So how do we find the time to start doing some of the fun stuff again?

Here are my tips that seem to work (some days anyway):

1. Sleep. This seems to be the deciding factor in whether I am going to have any energy to do anything positive the next day or if I am going to put on one too many dvds to get us through. It’s hard to get excited about lego or playdough or even a trip to the zoo when you are feeling that grumpy, heavy, mean-spirited feeling that comes with not enough sleep. Try going to bed half an hour or even an hour earlier. If you’re staying up late and watching awful TV or browsing inane websites because you’re too tired to get up and go to bed, force yourself to get up and turn it off.

2. Forward planning. The best days I have with AJ are when I think about the activity we are going to do before hand. That way I can have all the materials assembled or the arrangements made (even if it’s just in my own head) and the day seems to flow much better. There is also something to be said for positive thinking… write down your day’s plan… imagine it getting done and sometimes it just does.

3. Turn your kitchen table into the kids’ arts/crafts/science experiment hub. While you are making dinner or washing the dishes or sitting with your laptop or whatever, your kids can be tinkering away at the kitchen table with your input when they need it while you get your chores done. We have deliberately bought a very cheap kitchen table from IKEA and the surface is slowly but surely being completely ruined. It’s covered with glue and bits of dead playdough, felt tip pen marks and blobs of dried paint. Our idea is to let it be and not worry about it for the time being and then eventually we will either replace it with a more expensive, more permanent table or we can sand back the surface and start all over again.

4. Find activities that you enjoy doing too. There’s no point feeling guilty about not taking your kids to the playground and pushing them on the swings every day if you just don’t enjoy it. Find an alternative that you will all enjoy – maybe a walk in a national park, or shoot hoops or try some crazy dancing in the lounge room.

5. Relax about the mess and the cleaning up. Let’s face it, having kids around the place means there is going to be a lot of mess and that’s just part of it. If it doesn’t all get packed away by the end of the day it doesn’t really matter all that much. Likewise, think about which chores really can wait. That pile of clean laundry that needs folding can sit there another day if you would rather be putting together an ant farm or making that papier mache space ship.

6. Turn off the TV! If you are in the habit of watching TV with dinner or for long stretches of time in the evening, and everyone sits there glued to whatever show happens to be on because that’s the way it has always been, then try turning it off. Instead, have a conversation, play a game, go for a walk or sit out in the yard and enjoy the last evening light or the first stars. If you are stuck for ideas, there always plenty of stuff to be found on Kiddley!

Some other and similar ideas:

Making time for project making on 52 Projects (which inspired this post).

Write a NOT-to-do List again on 52 Projects.

Tips for being a more light-hearted parent (via Parent Hacks)

Recently I found a brochure in my Maternal, Child Health centre which was advertising classes to teach you and your baby how to use sign language to communicate before it can speak (as young as 6 months). I was quite intrigued. I did wonder if teaching babies to sign might have adverse effects on normal speech development, but the things I can find on the web all say that there shouldn’t be any problem with this at all (though perhaps they all have a baby sign language video to sell so who knows…)

So if you feel a strong desire to find out what your baby is thinking or needing then perhaps the two of you learning a few signs won’t go astray.

Here’s a photo dictionary of signs you could try (candy?? you’re asking for trouble if you teach them this one in my opinion!) or you could make up your own. The recommended dose is to start with between three to twelve signs and see how you go from there. When you are doing each activity make sure you show your baby the sign and eventually your baby will understand and make the sign themselves. Consistency is the key – use the same sign each time you do the same activity. It might take weeks or even months but eventually they should cotton on.

Some resources:

Signing with your baby has some great tips, how-tos and the afore mentioned excellent photo dictionary – ultimately trying to sell products and classes (FYI) but a really imformative site.

An ABC (US) news health report on baby signing.

Comments on Blogging Baby from parents and carers who have tried it. Definitely worth reading through.

Baby Signs website (via Blogging Baby)