I’ve done cyanotypes with my kids using the pre-made sunprint sheets. Now my son is always looking for things that will look interesting on a print, and has a few hanging in his room.

Last year I had to pull a 6 or 7 year old kid out of the water. He was swimming back and forth in a small section of the pool, and I could see he was getting tired. Luckily, I was standing there with my one year old when I heard him call for help behind me. He went down, and I was close enough to grab him with my free…

For those that have kids that don’t have a phone, I’ve found that the stoplight alarm clock we bought for my son works reasonably well. During the night, the red light is on, which tells him he’s not allowed to get up. When the light turns green, he can get out of bed and wake us up. It has greatly reduced the number…

It was a last resort. They both refused to brush, no matter what we did. Now, there are no fights, and they are eager to get their stickers. That fact that brushing is no longer a fight makes it completely worth it to me.

I found a great help for tooth brushing for my kids (ages 4 and 2)- the Oral B magic timer app. Every time they brush a little movie plays the shows a toothbrush brushing away the suds revealing a virtual sticker that then goes in their sticker book. If you have an Oral B toothbrush with some character on it, you can…

This slime was a big part of my son’s third birthday party last year. All the kids loved making it. They were fascinated at how as you mixed it it started congealing into the slime. For the most part, the girls were really into it but the boys thought it was gross.

If you’re using it in a smoothie, why peel it? I take the frozen banana, cut off the ends, and throw the whole thing in. Just wash it first. from http://www.livescience.com/45005-banana-nutrition-facts.html:

When my oldest got to the point when he could crawl to the entertainment center and press buttons/turn knobs, I build a frame to put in front and stapled a screen onto it. That solved the problem pretty effectively.

Clif Builder’s bars are a mess in the heat. They do melt pretty easily - that’s one mess. But if they melt then re-solidify, the outer coating turns into a crumbling disaster, spreading quickly melting crumbs everywhere. Keeping one in your bag or a car is a guaranteed nightmare. 

I think my kid would take that as a challenge to pry it off the table, making more of a mess than he otherwise would.

I was on a deadlocked jury in Baltimore a few years ago, for a minor drug possession case. There were two jurors that would not budge. One refused to find not guilty because she said a black man that looked a lot like the defendant tried to intimidate her on the way to the courthouse, and this was her method of…