Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my home office is a Kids' Outings folder containing a collection of leaflets detailing the various attractions and facilities of my local area. 'How organised!' I hear you say. Not a bit of it. For a start, I can never find the folder. If it does turn up, and I can find the brochure I want among all the dog-eared rubbish, the information is usually out-of-date.
Sorting out my filing would perhaps put an end to this events-planning misery. But another, quicker, solution for me and for nurseries planning some summer days out is to go to the World Wide Web, where sites dedicated to events, activities and facilities for children are on the increase.
Geographical coverage is still patchy. Some areas have nothing, and some have sites that are still under construction. All the existing sites are worth a visit. They may not yet have up-to-date events information but they usually have lists of all the local venues with descriptions and telephone numbers so that you can find out what's going on there at the moment.
The most ambitious player is www.planit4kids.com.The company's home page links into local sites, each with their own web address, for example, www.london4kids.com. At the moment, the service covers seven cities - Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Manchester. The sites provide information on sports, party planning, toddler activities, classes and workshops, special needs facilities and restaurants in addition to the usual stuff on theatres, cinemas, museums and galleries. There are also features and reviews of books, videos and software. Some local sites are better than others on the current events diary.
One of the best 'what's on' sites is www.kidsdirect-cambridge.co.uk.It was set upsingle-handedly by Debbie Banaszkiewicz, editor of the (printed) Cambridge Kidsdirect listings magazine.
Set up in December last year, it has received 1,500 hits since January - not bad for a new, locally-based site. The magazine appears three times a year and Debbie was receiving lots of phone calls from people too impatient to wait for the next publication. A regularly updated website seemed to be the answer and, as the parent Kidsdirect company wasn't interested in setting one up, Debbie decided to go it alone. Funding has come mainly from adverts in the magazine and partly from people advertising on the website. She had no experience of web design, but got launched after just one evening spent with a teach-yourself Microsoft Front Page 2000 CD Rom. Debbie has three children and says that the site is her fourth baby - she gets satisfaction from looking after it, but finds it very time consuming, especially late at night.
