Are shingles contagious. i have small children.

Possibly: Hopefully your children have already been vaccinated against chicken pox, which will help protect them. The lesions can potentially be contagious to those with no immunity to chicken pox (ie young children not yet immunized), so it would be best to avoid any direct contact until your lesions are gone/dried up.

Shingles not contag.: Shingles cannot be passed between people. However, the virus that causes shingles, the varicella zoster virus, can be spread, by direct contact with fluid from one of the blisters, from a person with active shingles, to a person who has never had chickenpox. In this case, the person exposed to the virus might develop chickenpox, but they would not develop shingles.