If, like me, you are trying to do your bit to reduce your waste footprint on the planet and reuse whatever you can, then this is just a small way to help with one of those things that can create unneeded plastic waste at kids birthday parties.
I decided this year that instead of buying (very cheap I have to say) themed plastic party bags I would either make something myself or buy paper bags.
To be fair you can buy reasonably cheap paper party bags
Recently we had an issue in our house where my son’s Kindle Fire was stuck on mute and I couldn’t get the volume back up whatever I tried. He, funnily enough was happy to watch his Fire with no volume! I guess it was better than nothing.
It is the kids Fire with the sturdy blue cover that it happened to but I guess maybe it could happen to other Fires too if they work the same way.
I dragged down the settings from the top and sure enough the mute button was on, so I tried dragging the volume slider and it dragged fine but still the mute button was on. I tried holding the mute button to turn it off but that also had no effect.
Even the volume buttons on the side of the Fire did not make any difference, the volume was still off.
I couldn’t figure out what my son had done to turn off the volume and I couldn’t find any answers online. I did find something talking about some settings that may have caused it but I couldn’t find what they were talking about.
Anyway, I found an answer (it is not ideal but it works so I guess it is an answer), and it was the age old answer where technology was concerned, a hard reboot. I turned the Fire off by holding down the power button until it asked if I wanted to turn it off and then turned it back on again by holding the button again and sure enough when I tried it again the volume was back on again.
I have had the problem of no sound on the Fire a couple of times now. I can only assume that my son presses something somewhere along the line to do this. It doesn’t seem to be a simple mute as this should then come back on again when you unmute it, but it doesn’t.
Oh well, at least there is a solution that will not drive me completely crazy!
Update: We now have a new Fire and the same thing happens with this too. Apparently there may be a certain app that causes this issue but I don’t know which one so that doesn’t really help! In any case the reboot does still work and the mute problem does not happen so much that this gets annoying.
Here is a fun craft activity to do with the kids – how to make your own very hungry caterpillar. This could be an activity for your own kids or something you can do in batches for a group of children, e.g at a playgroup or preschool.
The result is this, the caterpillar before he ate through all that food and got a tummy ache!
Firstly paint your green card or paper with a very rough mix of dark green and yellow paint. Make sure the colours don’t blend together too well!
Mark up the back of the card with discs. If you are just doing one or two you can obviously make them much bigger.
Cut them out so that they all have slightly differing colours in them.
Cut a body shape out of white card and a head out of the red paper. if you don’t have red paper colour in some white paper with a red pen!
Use a glue stick to start gluing down the body pieces one at a time, overlapping each other onto the card body.
Stick on the head and then you can either use sticky eyes or else just draw on your own eyes (the rights colours are green in the middle and yellow outside but sticky eyes do just fine). Draw in his mouth with a marker or felt pen.
You can then use sellotape to attach the lolly stick to the back of the head so that you can move the caterpillar around – ideal to use with the story book.
And there you go, the finished hungry caterpillar:
And if you want to buy the book…
Raiding your child’s piggy bank is not something that I would generally suggest although I am sure there are plenty of people who have suddenly found themselves short of cash or just some change that have needed to do it in the past!
But it might be important that you do it before the middle of October 2017!
The reason for this is the introduction of the new £1 coin that is happening on 28th March of this year. The new £1 coin will be completely different to the old round one as it will be 12 sided and not round for starters. There are many other aspects of the new pound coin that will be different from the old one in a bid to stop counterfeiters.
You will still be able to use the old £1 coin until 15th October 2017 but after that nobody is obliged to accept the coin. However you will be able to pay it in to most post office and bank accounts, even though you will likely not be able to spend it.
So it is probably a good idea to maybe empty out that piggy bank and either swap it for new coins when you get them, or maybe pay it in to a child’s savings account if they have one.
It will be easier to do this before the 15th October deadline as you (or they) will be able to spend it in shops along with the new one pound coin.
So on 15th October 2017 the old one pound coin will no longer be legal tender.
If you are reading this and it is after the 15th October 2017 deadline and you have found a stash of the old £1 coins then take them into your bank and they should be able to credit them to your account.
No doubt there will be plenty of people finding £1 coins down the back of sofas and in clothes for quite a while to come!
If you are looking for things to do with the kids in the summer holidays then one thing you may not have realised is that a lot of the cinemas have special screenings for kids (and their parents!) at really great prices this summer.
Often these screenings are in the mornings as this is a time when the cinemas are normally closed and also is a good time for younger children to venture out to the cinema.
Not all of the cinemas in the particular group show the same films to it is worth looking around to see what is on where.
Check out the information below for details for the larger companies:
Cineworld has 82 cinemas in the Uk and over 800 screens and they offer morning showings of child friendly films at around 10am during the summer holidays and selected weekends.
Their promotion is called Movies for Juniors and prices for a 2D film showing are £2.00 or £1.80 if you book in advance with a Cineworld account. 3D films cost £3.50 again with a 10% discount if you book online.
Odeon have over 120 cinemas in the UK and also have special movies in the summer holidays and weekends through their “Odeon Kids” scheme. These films are £2.50 for children and adults and can be (and are advised to be) booked online in advance as they prove pretty popular.
Vue has 85 multiplex cinemas in the UK and offer a similar scheme known as “Mini Mornings” which cost from £1.99 for 2D and £2.79 for 3D films at weekends and during summer holidays.
Not as big as some of the cinema chains but Empire have their “Empire Jnrs” movies for all the family every weekend. So these are not specifically for summer holidays but if you have an Empire cinema near you this could be good at weekends.
Ticket prices are not specified on the Empire website but said to be at ‘pocket money prices’ but when we tried to book a price of £1.75 per adult and child was quoted for the particular movie and location we chose.
So on a rainy day this may be a great option to keep the kids occupied for a few hours. Summer holidays can be an expensive time and although obviously this is not a free activity it is certainly a lot cheaper than normal screenings which are becoming out of reach for some parents on lower incomes.
