DADSKILLS

DADSKILLS

The practical dad handbook — hands-on skills, fixes, and know-how for showing up for your kids.

From setting a fair allowance and saving for college to checking a growth percentile, planning the family budget, sizing a car seat or first bike, and reining in screen time, DadSkills pairs free hands-on calculators with practical how-to guides. Skills you can use today to show up for your kids.

Explore the toolsExplore The Fatherhood & Craft Museum →

Tools & Calculators

Free tools for raising kids — allowance & chore calculator, college savings calculator, child growth percentile calculator, family budget calculator, car seat & bike size finder, and a screen time budget planner.

The Fatherhood & Craft Museum

Wander an immersive, richly illustrated collection — fatherhood and family through history; the tools, trades, and DIY that get things built and fixed; childhood and growing up; and outdoor life and the rites of passage that mark it, each in its own gallery. Every entry, image, and fact is drawn from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. No content is AI-generated.

Tour the museum →

From the Journal

Practical how-to guides on allowances and teaching money, saving for college, everyday fixes and DIY with the kids, family budgeting, car seats and first bikes, and handling screen time — reading to pair with the calculators above.

How to Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike

The fastest way to teach a child to ride is to skip the training wheels and teach balance first: get the seat height and helmet right, then work through a simple glide-then-pedal progression that has most kids riding in a session or two.

Basic Home and Car Fixes Every Parent Should Know

The ten-minute home and car repairs every parent should have in their back pocket, from shutting off the water and resetting a breaker to jump-starting a car and changing a flat, plus a clear sense of when to call a pro.

First-Aid Basics Every Parent Should Know

How to stock a first-aid kit and handle the scrapes, cuts, burns, nosebleeds, choking, fevers, and head bumps of family life, with clear signs for when to get professional help. General information only, not medical advice.

How to Build a Family Budget That Actually Works

A practical budgeting system built for family life: work from take-home pay, separate fixed and variable costs, adapt the 50/30/20 rule, use sinking funds for irregular bills, and run a fifteen-minute monthly review.

Teaching Kids About Money, Age by Age

A stage-by-stage guide to teaching kids about money, from coins and a clear jar at age three to first paychecks and compound interest in the teenage years, with the small lessons that add up.

Camping With Kids: A Beginner's Guide

Everything a first-time family needs to camp with kids and actually enjoy it: choosing an easy site, the gear that matters, keeping kids warm at night, simple meals, real jobs for the kids, and a safety talk.

Browse all guides →

Keep Learning

Plain-language explainers on the everyday skills of fatherhood — an allowance that teaches money, saving for the years ahead, reading a growth chart, building a family budget, choosing a car seat or first bike, and setting screen-time limits — everything you need to go deeper with confidence.

Visit the Learn hub →