The UK website Automated Home writes about News Anchor, which automatically creates a video podcast, in the style of an evening news broadcast, consisting of the latest news from your favorite RSS feeds. It's a neat idea and the demo video is well worth a peek.
I don't have News Anchor, so I haven't tried this, but it occurs to me that because RSS feeds are easy to create (I'm partial to Feeder), you could create a custom feed that makes up a newscast for your family and children to remind them of upcoming household events. The result will be a format a lot more compelling than whatever you're using now.