LittleLegends.biz

Join in the short family walks taking place across the UK to give children orphaned by AIDS a better future. There is a small entry fee of £5 and all proceeds go to Save the Children.

The next walk is happening in Battersea Park on Sunday 19th August (10.30am start). You are given a goody bag and there is a chance to meet Children’s TV Characters.

To register and to get more information about the walks go to Pushy Mums

Go ahead and help push for change

I have just realised that I haven’t included Hsien-Hsien Lei’s blog on the blogroll. She used to post over at the well known blog about toys called Play Library but has a personal blog called Cotton-Pickin’ Days – Toys, Tantrums and Laughter with a Scientist. Hsien-Hsien Lei is an American expat living in the UK but she has an honorary status here as she has been a great help to Little Legends in the past

Don’t miss her great post entitled Top 10 Things my Four Year old Has Learned from Nintendo Wii

I always get excited when I discover more blogs by UK parents and I have just found another great one:

Glamumous – Housework, husband, kids and a budget written by Amanda from Sheffield

If you know of any other british parent bloggers that are not mentioned here, do let me know

I’ve just been told that the proprietor of one of our listings has been prosecuted and sentenced. The owner

“falsely described two holiday rental properties near Ross on Wye namely Brynheulog as having a ‘Tourist Board 4*’ rating and the ‘Old Limekilns / Old Kiln’ as having an ‘AA 4* rating’, which she knew to be false. Numerous complaints were also made about her attitude and behaviour to guests.”

Rosa, who was kind enough to let us know the situation, said that

“I do not think it is in anybody’s interests to promote this person to the public.”

I very much agree, and as I see it there are two ways for us to deal with this.

The first is simply to delete the entry. This way nobody looking at Little Legends finds the place, and so nobody gets harmed.

That’s fine, just as long as people’s only way of finding out about either of the two “holiday homes” is through us. Pretty much everyone I know, though, uses one or more points of reference when looking things up online.

The second way is to keep the listing, but add comments and ratings to warn people of the situation. And this is what we’ve opted for.

This way, hopefully, the information is out in the open, echoing the Herefordshire site’s news about the holiday homes. And this way, hopefully, people stand a slightly better chance of avoiding disappointment and worse on their holidays.

There may well be better ways of dealing with this, though, or I may have chosen the wrong option. Do please let us know what you think, though. At root, we’re trying to help parents and families, and so if you think what we’ve done is misguided, then please help us steer on to the right track.

Source:Chore Wars

Chore Wars looks like it might be a fun way to get your children doing housework. Basic accounts are free, and with them you get a character. For each chore the character completes, they earn “experience points” – or XP – and the more XP a child character gets then the more their character grows (in terms of skills) and the more treasure they can earn.

You can create an “adventure” for each chore, and assign different benefits and treasure that accrue when the chore’s finished. For example, “weeding” might give your character more dexterity, more strength and more wisdom – you can decide. I also really liked the idea that you could set the likelihood of finding treasure when you completed a chore. If someone finishes the washing up, you can decide how likely it is that they find “gold pieces” or “cinema tickets”. If they don’t find the tickets first time, they might have to do it again …

Anyway, certainly worth a play

[Thanks Ross for the link]

If you or your kid are nuts about Harry Potter, head over to Free Stuff 4 Kids for details of 10 free Harry Potter activity sites

What do you think of the latest report showing that children of working mums are likely to be obese? If you think it is time to give working mums a break, you will like Mother At Large’s post on this topic

If you are desperate for ideas to entertain the kids this rainy summer holidays, pay a visit to Little Mummy who has 50 great suggestions.

Finally, you can find out how to have a thrify pregnancy and be frugal with a new baby over at Becoming Domestic

Just speaking to a friend Jon and he told me about a new research project at the BBC called Backpage.

It’s essentially a place for parents, children and teachers to share homework hints via video – a little like YouTube but homework focused. At the moment, Backstage is a research project running for the next 4 months and they’re looking for clips with tips on Maths and English. As they say,

There’s no special formula – just send in tips that you think would help someone else help their kids with homework….

Fingers crossed this moves from research to production soon – it’s a brilliant idea

[cross-posted from Monkeymagic]

… thanks to the new British Parent Bloggers ring, I have discovered more parents in the UK who blog and they have been added to the blogroll. The newcomers are in no particular order:

Wednesday’s Child
I wanted to be a homedad; I got one fifth of my wish. Here is the consequence…

Jo Beaufoix
A laid back blog by 30-something mum and would-be writer, Jo Beaufoix, who tries to look at the world through rose-tinted glasses but often finds they’re covered in something sticky.

21st Century Mummy
Family life in the 21st century brings many challenges and opportunities, which if you think about too deeply could drive you bonkers. This blog offers one woman’s perspective on life from the edge of a beautiful market town in Suffolk.

Man about the House
My life, my wife, my food, my brood, the universe and everything!

T Bird Anni Rides Again
A mum a dad and a girl all muddling through life love and learning together!

Tales from the Naughty Step
Random musings of my everyday life as a working mum of two.

Ingenious Rose
A lighthearted blog about life as the single working parent of a 3 year old daughter with the odd bits of news, celebrity and books thrown into the mix!

My eBabyA blog where readers can submit their own articles on their personal experiences of all pregnancy, birth and parenting related issues.

Slackers Guide to Parenting
A guide to parenting the slack way.

There was a great article in The Times recently listing free days out for the family this summer across the UK. These include:
1. Spitalfields City Farm, London
2. World Museum, Liverpool
3. Transport Museum, Coventry
4. East Midlands Aeropark, Castle Donington
5. Pickfords House, Derby
6. Baltic Centre, Newcastle
7. High Force Waterfall, Middleton-in-Teesdale
8. Pudsey Park, Leeds
9. Pitt River Museum, Oxford
10. Natural History Museum, Tring
11. National Museum, Cardiff
12. Victorian Pier, Clacton-on-Sea

If you have been to any of them, let others know whether or not they are worth visiting

Erica, of Little Mummy fame, has recently contacted me to tell me that she is setting up a new blog ring for british parent bloggers.

The aim of the ring is:

to find other british based bloggers, for us to find more like minded people and increase our community

If you are interested then read her blog post here.

The criteria for joining are:

a) Blogging regularly on a topic that relates to parenting (others will be accepted on a case by case basis, ie splogs and spammers need not apply)

b) A Parent

c) Living in Britain

d) You must display the blog ring HTML on your site

NB This blog ring is not open to shops and splogs!