Are your kids itching to use your sewing machine and start creating masterpieces? Maria from One Hour Craft has posted a tutorial on how to teach your kids to sew the easiest and safest way. Perhaps after they have mastered the machine, you could set them to sewing a Valentine’s garland.

Tags: garland, sewing, sewing machine, valentines day

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**

Tags: 11yrs+, 5 7yrs, 8 10yrs, allowance, charity, pocket money, preschoolers

If your child is lucky enough to have an iPod, you might want to consider making a special fuzzy Domokun-inspired cover for it. Craftster has an excellent tutorial for how to put one together. (via Whipup)

You could use these directions but mix and match different fuzzy fabrics of different colours to make your own unique monster… enlist your child to help pick them out and they will be very pleased. Visit Jenny Harada’s site for fabulous fuzzy monster inspiration.

Tags: domokun, iPod, monsters, mp3

Today is International Internet-Free Day!

“Do you check your inbox every five minutes? Do you lose track of time surfing the online shops? Have you e-mailed a colleague at a desk next to you? Do you podcast your daily thoughts, rather than call your mother? Fear not: hope is at hand. Take a break on this Sunday January 28th: Internet Free Day.” - Global Ideas Bank

I only just found out about this but I am going to turn off my computer right now and go and play with some lego on the carpet before cooking up some chili (via Suburban Bliss) and then hitting the park. What are you up to today?

Tags: parenting, time management

Happy Australia Day to residents, citizens, visitors and ex-pats of Australia!

For those who don’t know much about Australia Day (and for those who do but might be interested anyway) here’s some information on what it’s all about.

Here are some ideas for how you might like to celebrate:

Read Mem Fox’s Possum Magic (available here) and make lamingtons, Anzac Biscuits or Pavlova (recipes over on Mem’s page).

Play a game of backyard cricket and have a barbeque.

Learn about Australia’s indigenous people and their culture.

And the Australian of the Year is Tim Flannery! Author of We are the Weather Makers - The Story of Global Warming. (via Read Alert)

Tag: Australia

Thank you to all who uploaded photographs to the Kiddley Flickr group for last week’s Photo Theme! The theme was “Weather where we are”. Above you can see Ethan’s hot weather snap, and Ice-covered Cedar uploaded by Tabewhite.

This week’s theme is “Made it Myself” - which is all about kids taking photos of things they have made. Encourage them to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

And there is always Phil’s post on Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.

Tags: Photo Theme, photography

I have very good memories of creating scratch art when I was a kid. After checking out Cindy’s tutorial I will be lining up this activitiy for AJ this weekend.

Tags: crayons, scratch

For those of you who live in the United States, the 23rd of January is National Soup Swap day (via Not Martha).

The idea is simple enough; Invite along everyone you know and ask them to invite everyone they know. Supply nibbles and drinks and ask everyone to bring along 6 single serves of frozen homemade soup, all packaged in cartons of the same size (about 1 litre / 1 quart) and swap them so that everyone goes home with a six different soups.

It’s probably a bit late to organise a soup swapping event for today (or even this weekend) if you haven’t already started simmering, so perhaps we could have a virtual swap. If you feel so inclined, write up your family’s favourite soup recipe on your blog and then leave us a link in the Kiddley comments. If you don’t have a blog, please feel free to post your recipes directly in our comments.

Here’s a recipe of our own devising which I posted about on Loobylu a couple of years ago. Kids seem to love it, mostly because of the extra fun of adding in all the garnishing bits at the end.

South of the Border Soup

Ingredients
blob of butter or olive oil for frying
1 onion chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped
1 stalk of celery chopped
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 can of 3 bean mix
1 can of chicken consommé (broth)
1 small can of creamed corn
Pinch of cayenne pepper (more if you like it hot)
Pinch of cumin
Pinch of dried oregano
Pinch of dried basil
Slices of avocado, grated cheese, sour cream, squeeze of lemon and tortilla chips (about one cut up per person) fried in olive oil for garnish

Method
Fry the onion, garlic, celery and spices gently in the oil or butter until onion is soft. Add the tin of tomatoes and cook until bubbling. Add the can of beans and the can of creamed corn. Cook until nice and bubbly and then blend with a hand blender. Add chicken consommé and let it heat through.

While this is warming up fry up your tortilla bits in olive oil until they are brown and puffy. Serve in big bowls with slices of avocado, cheese, cream and tortilla chips floating on top. We added a squeeze of lemon juice at the end, but lime would have been better.

You could add some bite sized bits of chicken for extra deliciousness. Alternatively, I am sure a vegetarian style soup would be just as good if you replaced the chicken stock with vegetable stock. Make plenty of the tortilla chips as they are really good to munch on.

Tags: comfort food, recipes, soup

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).

Tags: back to school, school books

By popular request, Photo Theme Friday is back for 2007! But today I am still getting organised so I am posting it on Saturday.

At the beginning of each weekend we will announce a new theme which becomes you child’s photo assignment for the week. Encourage theme to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

Last year’s themes included things like “My Favourite Things”, “We are Family” and “Shiny”…

This week’s theme is “Weather where we are“. I am looking forward to seeing lots of clouds, snow, rain, blazing hot beach scenes or gentle sunsets.

And there is always Phil’s post on Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.

Happy snapping!

Tags: 11yrs+, 5 7yrs, 8 10yr, Photo Theme, photography, preschoolers, weather