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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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Paint
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Use spray paint or emulsion (latext, US) paint to get a quick finish that cover mostly anything well
 You don’t have to use paint to finish your models, but paint can make a big difference to the look of a model. Not all models really need paint, but stuff made from things with writing over it or labels on will look about a million times better if the writing is covered up. In the case of the Space Rocket we used white paper wrapped round a Pringles Crisp tube and a toilet roll to give us the nice white finish, which we could then marker on, without getting our fingers wet. But then for the Floating Submarine model, spraying it with black and grey spray paint transformed it in about two minutes from a couple of old plastic bottles into something really exciting, that remained a favourite bath time toy for months.
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You can use any type of spray paint, but be careful to follow the instructions on the can. The paint is flammable when being sprayed, is bad for you if you breathe in the fumes and leaves a strong smell in your house for days. On the other hand, spray paint is ideal for quickly and permanently covering plastic, and spray paint for craft applications comes in a range of exciting finished these days.
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For quick coverage on most surfaces you can do a lot worse than standard, house decorating emulsion (Latex Paint in the US). If you don’t have any left over from your DIY projects, then you can buy tiny cans of paint very cheaply (match pots). It’s better for covering cardboard quickly, and the beauty of it is, that you can wash the brushes in water. Be careful of clothes though, emulsion dries really quickly on clothes (in about 2 minutes) and thereafter is impossible to remove.
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Acrylic paint is also very good at covering up and sticking to most surfaces, and although it is water based, it also has the benefit of being permanent (i.e. not water soluble) when dry. Acrylic paints dry very quickly and give bright satisfying colours. Tubes like the one shown here are reasonably expensive, although they are lovely to use and can all be mixed together to give a very professional finish. However acrylic paint also comes in big bottles from most good toy shops or on-line. Acrylic paint can be mixed with emulsion to tint it.
The Floating Submarine can be made in about 1 hour and easy to follow instructions are just waiting for you to download. Click on picture to go to Floating Submarine project.
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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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