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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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Wet glues
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Choose the right glue for the right job, otherwise you will waste a lot of time waiting for things to dry
There are a range of glues available for use in the home. Poly-vinyl acetate or PVA glue (called Elmer’s Glue in the US)but can also called white glue or wood glue is a tough rubbery polymer. Your kids will be familiar with PVA because it is used extensively in schools. From a model making point of view, for most applications, nothing is a substitute for the power and speed of a glue gun, so in my house, the PVA glue tends to stay in the cupboard. Nevertheless, it’s still is a superb wood glue, where the water based glue vehicle can really wet out the surface and soak into the wood, to give a strong joint that is often stronger than the surrounding wood. The trouble with PVA is that it is not good at sticking polythene or polypropylene, which are the two most common packaging plastics, and used in most Making from Junk
models, and it takes ages to dry, which means that kids lose interest in the project or have to wait overnight to see the results of their handiwork.
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However, PVA is still an excellent glue for papier mache projects, like the robot head which was made over a blown up balloon. To use PVA for papier mache it is best to water it down a bit (no more than half and half water) and pour the glue onto a dinner plate so the paper can be soaked through more easily. (A mixture of newspaper torn into strips and absorbent kitchen roll in strips or crumpled up into balls provide quick bulk is good for papier mache).
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Doing a project like this will be great fun and very messy, so although most PVAs are washable, your kids shouldn’t be in their Sunday best when they are getting PVA all over themselves. Don’t bother buying tiny little bottles of PVA (like the one shown) go to a builders merchants and buy a 2.5 litre bottle of PVA Bonding. It’s basically exactly the same as the expensive wood glue, but even for those volumes it’s a fraction of the price. If you want a handy pack to use round the house or on little paper projects, decant some of it off into an old shower gel bottle, but remember to write on the bottle what it is in permanent marker or some one who doesn’t know what you’ve done could be heading for one gloopy hairdo!
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Glue sticks and two part resins are OK but not as useful as Spray Mount and a glue gun, which respectively replace them. Glue sticks tend to be lumpy, although they are easy and safe for a child to use. Two part resins are very strong, but they take time to cure, can be very messy and do not stick packaging plastics together that well. Once they are mixed up they are very liquid and for many jobs, you might have trouble keeping the glue exactly where you want it. For just about every model making project, where a two part resin could be used, glue gun glue will work better and be easier.
Safety first
 Super glue (cyano-acrylate) is very good at sticking skin together (there are medical grades approved for closing wounds), and great care is needed when using it. Children should never be allowed to use super glue. It sticks vinyl (PVC) together very well, so is useful for mending most types of blow-up beach toys (use an old vinyl tax disc holder or window sticker as the patch), but is not suitable for most model and toy making projects because it is so thin and designed to stick broken surface together that match perfectly.
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Modelling Equipment
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This is your guide on how to easily make your models look great using a few simple tools and supplies. If you get the right glue and paint, then you can make a fabulous model out of more or less anything.  Here are few tips about getting the right stuff, so that you won’t be wasting your time waiting for rubbish glue to dry or paint that doesn’t  cover the surface properly. One of the things that frustrated me as a child was the rubbish stuff we kids had to use when doing any kind of craft work.
Professionals and art studios use a whole range of proper graphic products: Performance glues ( hot melt glues, double sided sticky tape, and Spray Mount), really sharp knives ( scalpels), dense ( permanent markers and lightweight but stiff mounting boards, ( foamboard) that are now all available cheaply on the web or every in DIY shops,  and all make it possible to make more or less anything and make it look superb. So really there is no reason to waste the valuable time you spend with your kids trying to make things using feeble glues that take forever to dry, felt pens that rub off on your hands, or useless cardboard that doesn’t fold right. Get a few nice bits and pieces and make your place an Aladdin’s Cave of wonderful making and doing things.
 The idea of making things with or for your kids is that you work on these projects together. For some of the more complex ones you will be doing most of the work, but as long as they are participating then they are learning and getting confidence from seeing how to solve problems and follow a plan. Some of the projects especially the paper folding and maybe even the easier pompom ones are suitable for children to tackle on their own, but whatever their skill level they should never be left alone with potentially dangerous equipment.
Craft knives and scalpels are very sharp and should never be used by a child, or left unattended where children are making stuff.
Glue guns get very hot and the melted glue is not only very hot but also very sticky. Children should not be allowed to use a glue gun unsupervised and if they are using it under supervision they need to be shown which bits get hot and learn how to use the glue without getting the hot melt glue on their fingers.  If a burn occurs get the glue off the finger as quickly as possible and run under cold water for at least five minutes. Turn your glue gun off after using it and put it to the back of the work surface out of reach, while it cools down. Make sure the wire isn’t trailing anywhere that might get tripped over. (All sounds like common sense, but we have had every type of minor accident!)
Superglue (cynoacrylate) sticks skin together permanently. In the hands of adults this feature can be tricky, in the hands of children superglue is downright dangerous and children should never be allowed to use it under any circumstances.
Permanent markers are just that; permanent, and will mark clothes, permanently, best to wear old clothes or an apron when doing painting and using permanent markers. They also mark table tops and carpet rather nicely and will bleed through one layer of normal paper to mark a table top underneath, so always put down another sheet of paper under your work, if using a marker to draw on paper.
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