The set of your children will be
parent = $("#accordion");
children = parent.children();
Please see:
http://api.jquery.com/children/[
^].
Do with then whatever you want. For example you can always enumerate them:
children.each(function () {
});
Note that you can, for example, add any property to each object, such as "ordinal value":
order = 0;
children.each(function () {
this["Order"] = order;
++order;
});
Please see:
http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.each/[
^].
—SA