It's half-term again, but the weather's bound to be terrible outside, so how are you going to keep the little ones entertained? Fear not - the web will give you a great start to help planning ideas and activities for the week ahead. Don't worry though, this doesn't mean sitting your children in front of a PC screen for hours, all of these ideas are hands-on or out-and-about!

Fun ideas on the New Zealand-based Kids Friendly website range through things for children to make and do to cooking or picking a special colour to wear on each day of the week. I particularly like the recipe for making slime!

Perhaps you have a budding gardener in your midst. The Organic Organisation offers guidance on potting plants and even planting spuds. The site has a section of its website devoted to getting children involved in plants and gardening during the February half-term and a whole lot more besides.

The Tip King website at offers a whole host of things to do during winter. One suggestion is to find a pen pal. Many parents are anxious about letting their children contact strangers through the internet, but this page provides links to a whole range of organisations who can arrange pen pals by post. This is a great way to get children to write letters, make friends overseas and get to know different cultures.

Get hands on with the Crafters' Community website, a US-based site which in-between all the adverts features a good selection of crafts for children to try out. In particular the Recycle Crafts section has some great ideas for turning packaging and junk items into something fun. There are badges made out of jigsaw pieces, a sun catcher made from an old plastic lid and plenty more.

If that's not enough, then visit Hobby Craft, which is a UK site with even more ideas for getting children to be creative at home. It features a searchable ideas library, which contains excellent suggestions for every season, including dozens of craft ideas to try out for Easter. Start off on this page - designed especially for half-term.

Days out are always fun, and museums can be great places to spend a day. The 24-hour museum website purports to be the gateway to 2,500 museums, galleries and heritage attractions across the country. The site brought up more than 40 suggestions of places to visit in Cumbria alone, from Abbot Hall to the Wordsworth museum, plus many of which you may not have heard. Add to that the 60 listed for Lancashire and 70 for North Yorkshire and you willl always have somewhere to go on a day trip!

If there is plenty of energy to be used up, you really can't beat a trip to a castle, and the Castle Explorer site is a great guide to many of those you visit, with details of what's on offer at each, how to get there, their history and lots besides.

Noticeable by its absence from Castle Explorer is the imposing Lancaster Castle, but you can check out the tour times of the castle on this site.

The websites may be virtual, but the ideas they contain are very much in the real world. Don't forget to check out the School's Out feature in the Leisure section for details of plenty of local events.