Sheltered lives: things for kids to do during downpours

SMALL PRINT:THE IRISH summer is many people's favourite time – sorry, day – of the year, but what about the rest of the time, when clouds laugh in the face of meteorologists' predictions of heatwaves, rain lashes down, and trips to the beach, the zoo or any outdoor place become lost causes? Never fear: in order to stop the off-school citizens from crippling your patience this summer, we've come up with a list of things to do in your own home and other indoors settings.

Make your own home cinemaGoing to the cinema is one of the best things to do on a rainy day, but multiple tickets and crazily-priced popcorn means it can't be a daily activity. Instead, borrow a projector from a closed school or office, or split the cost between a few parents and rent one. Hang a white sheet on a wall, put the popcorn on, plug a DVD player or laptop into the projector, and hey presto: you have a home cinema to keep youngsters entertained for hours.

Get artyThe National Art Gallery hosts free workshops every Sunday for families and young people. When your children become amazing at art, you can live off their Damien Hirst-sized earnings.

Museums kids won't complain aboutThe National Leprechaun Museum may sound cheesy, but it does a nifty turn in Irish legends and folklore, so it's not just a money extractor for bemused tourists. Kilmainham Gaol, Wicklow Gaol, the Science Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Country Life and the relatively new Wax Museum (featuring Michael Jackson, above) are also worth a gander.

Hit the factory floorThe Toy Soldier Factory and Visitor Centre in Cork offers daily painting workshops for €5. Plus, you can visit the real working factory and pretend you're in one of those "how things are made" programmes.

Swap shopWhat better way to amuse young people indoors than allowing them to blaze a trail with their own pop-up neighbourhood shop? Opening a swap shop where they can trade clothes and other belongings they're no longer interested in along with their mates' belongings will allow for an afternoon's "shopping" without the cost.

- UNA MULLALLY

A deep-sea dive to treasure: the ‘Lusitania’ and other valuable journeys to the seabed

THIS WEEK, one of the last major dives is taking place on the wreck of the RMS Lusitania, which was sunk off the coast of Cork in May 1915 by a German U-boat. The dive team, who are being filmed by National Geographic for a major television special, hope to find out what was in the cargo area of the passenger vessel when it went down, in an effort to better understand 20th-century warfare.

For some critics, the expedition is a glorified treasure hunt, and debate has long raged about whether or not there was a large quantity of gold and other valuables on board. There is even some speculation that the art collector Hugh Lane, who was on board, had priceless masterpieces preserved in lead casings in his possession when he went down with the ship. The owners of the vessel dismiss such claims, and say the chances of finding anything valuable on the wreck “are very, very slim”. Wherever you get shipwrecks, you also get treasure speculators and debated loot. Below are some of the most valuable shipwrecks of recent years.

Fizzy findsA shipwreck discovered in July 2010 near the Finnish coast threw up some unlikely booty. The ship, which dated from 1825-1830, contained several bottles of valuable champagne, with some of the brands long since gone out of business. A bottle of 200-year-old Veuve Clicquot discovered on the wreck was auctioned some months ago and earned a world-record price of €30,000. In November 2010 a bottle of the now defunct Juglar brand taken from the wreck sold for €24,000. An Asian collector purchased both bottles, but the money didn't end up in the back pocket of an opportune diver. All the proceeds went to the local government authorities in the area where the wreck is located, and the proceeds were subsequently donated to charitable causes.

Emerald treasureLast month a US company called Mel Fisher's Treasures discovered a 10-carat emerald ring in immaculate condition – despite the fact it had been on the seabed off the Florida Keys for almost 400 years. The ship, the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, was a Spanish galleon that sank off the coast of Florida in 1622 during a hurricane. The company has been combing the wreck of the ship since discovering it in 1969, and the valuables discovered are estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The latest find was likely to have belonged to an aristocrat, and is worth about $500,000 (€349,000).

The Black SwanIt's not all plain sailing for those involved in salvaging and locating loot from shipwrecks, as US company Odyssey Marine Exploration has been finding out. The company, which has located several wrecks in recent years, announced in May 2007 that it had discovered a horde of coins on a wreck of a 19th-century galleon code-named The Black Swan. A December 2009 court ruling decided the loot belonged to Spain, who had identified the ship as Our Lady of Mercedes, which sank in 1804 and had more than half a million gold and silver coins on board. The case is under appeal, and the final resting place of the coins remains uncertain.

- BRIAN O'CONNELL