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Cautionary Tales For Children
Wonderful witty poems great for reading to your children. The stories and rhymes will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
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Research has shown how important YOU are to your children and how as a dad the things you do, and keep on doing, really count, whether you live with them, or you are a single dad and are only able see them once a month, once a week or more, what you do really matters. This site is dedicated to all dads but will be of special relevance to the single dad. Remember, you are half the reason your children exist and they need you whether you live with them or not. As their dad, you have what it takes to make their lives successful and fulfilling no matter how often you see them. This site is about all the positive things that we as parents have to offer our children.
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Putting LEDs into your models
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They can really brighten up any model and make it look professional
 To add the finishing touches to an advanced model, nothing works better than a bit of light. LEDs (light emitting diodes) are brilliant for this. They are low power, low current drain (meaning that they last a long time on the same battery), they can be very bright and are small, so they can be put almost anywhere in a model or homemade toy. Also, they are very cheap.
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A very quick and easy way to introduce (LED) light to your model is to use the guts from a cheap key ring or pen light torch. You can use the torch exactly as is just puting the whole thing in the model and arranging it so the button is easily accessable, or pressed on by an extra bit of cardboard. And because those little pen torches only cost a few pence, you can put them in every model.
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If you have some thin wire, separate the LED from the switch battery assembly so that you can mount the LED anywhere on the model and have the battery and switch unobtrusively somewhere else. Break open the key-ring light housing and wrap one end of each of the thin wires round the LED legs and sticky taping the other end of the wires to the battery / switch assembly (taking care to make sure that the polarity is the same as it was before, because the LED will not work and may be damaged if connected the wrong way across a battery).
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On the web you will find a massive range of very cheap LEDs for sale by mail order. Choose the hyper bright flashing ones that have a built in resistor so that they can be wired straight to a 9V battery without the need for any other components. You can use solder if you have a soldering iron, but wrapping wire tightly round the LED legs and sticking with tape is just a good for a model, although a battery connector is useful for the battery end of the wires because the positive terminal of a PP3 9V very hard to wrap a wire round. The TARDIS, K9 and the Ghost Detector all have LEDs in them. If you have designed it, so that in your toy / model, the LED is only switched on while it is being played with, a 9V PP3 battery will last the lifetime of the model and can be sealed up inside the model, which saves the complication of having to build a removable panel to change the battery.
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Funky pompoms
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 Dadcando has some truly amazing funky pompom projects, and making a pompom couldn't be easier or more instantly rewarding. You don't even have to have wool, you can make a pompom from any lightweight plastic bag, bin-liner or sandwich bag.
This tiny little pompom was made from a transparent blue plastic sandwich bag. Perfect for making little pompom creatures to decorate the top of your pens and pencils.
All you need is a piece of cardboard, which you cut into two same sized rings.
You bundle up some wool into 2m lengths and thread them through the rings about 8 at a time (or a plastic bag).
Keep threading the wool through the ring until you can't fit any more through.
Push the tip of a pair of scissors into the wool and between the discs inside and cut round the rim.
Tie a few lengths of wool round the pompom bundle between the cardboard discs and then remove the discs by slipping them off the wool or cutting them.
 That's it. It couldn't be much simpler, but it is only the start. Both boys and girls love making pompoms and dadcando's projects have easy to follow instructions and the beautifully designed printed image patterns will make sure that your pompom looks fabulous as well as being something really wacky and memorable, and they’re all so quick and easy to do.
So, beg or borrow a ball of wool off someone to get you going, or visit your local fabric shop and buy a ball or two. There are some crazy wools out there, have a look at the wonderful pompom William designed in Your Models, using a fun multicoloured wool. I guarantee once you start making pompoms with your kids, they won't want to stop.
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