Photo Credit to woodleywonderworks on Flickr
You have all probably experienced a short-term power outage. Even 24 hours with young children around can be a challenge. What if you had to go without power for a week? A month? With ice storms and tornadoes all around us, that is not an impossibility. Fortunately, you are in control right now, and can choose how you want your experience to be. Tense and unpleasant? Or fun and adventurous!
Fun Family Preparedness Activities
*Learn to cook over an open fire. Make this the plan for the next several Family Nights. Involve the children in the prep, the cooking and the clean up. Do the entire meal with no electricity! You can even incorporate fire safety into the activity.
*Make a solar oven and bake a treat.
*Make out a month’s worth of menus, and a plan to stock up. Set aside a special place in the pantry that everyone knows not to dip into – that is your Special Food.
*Go power-free! Turn off the main electrical switch on Friday night and don’t turn it back on until Sunday night. Make a list of all the things you wish had thought of before. Spend the next few family nights shopping, planning and preparing, and then do it again. Did you fare better the second time than the first?
*Compile family-favorite, non-electronic games. If you don’t have any, spend Family Night learning some. Cooperative Games creates and sells board games without the element of competition. The players all have to work together to ‘win’ the game.
*Build a family library. Library access is something we take for granted, but if the power is out where you are, your library may be out of power, too. What are the family’s favorite books? What books can be read over and over without becoming boring? What are your favorite read aloud books? Do you have a good selection of books for each reading level in the family? For all interests in the family? I only buy books that I know I will refer to as needed, or that are good enough to read over and over!
*Build a chicken coop and raise some baby chicks. Teach the children now how to care for livestock. If it becomes essential, they will already be comfortable with their jobs.
*Hatch out some eggs. It is such a glorious day when the first peeps are heard through the shell!!
*Learn to fish by going fishing! Build a worm bed so bait is always available.
*Learn about edible weeds, then have a treasure hunt to find them. Have a picnic salad for lunch!
*Teach fire safety. Have fun with fire extinguishers. Learn how to light candles and lanterns and how to safely carry them from room to room.
*Eat weekly or at least monthly from your stocked up food. That way when you HAVE to eat it, it will not be unfamiliar. Better yet, only store what your family likes to eat!
*Camp. (Yuck!)
*Hike. This not only gets children familiar with the outdoors, it builds stamina and strength.
Preparation does not need to be hard or scary or boring. Children need to be just as prepared as adults for hard times. Plan now with fun family activities to make your next power outage as pleasant as possible.
Don’t forget to teach them to wash their own clothes by hand and hang them on the line to dry.
Make them live on 3 gallons of water per person for 3 days. That will make them appreciate the water faucet a lot more. Don’t let them use ice in anything for those 3 days.
Don’t forget winter training. One year when an ice storm put out our electricity, my son and I had to live in one room of the house for 3 days once with only the fireplace and a kerosene stove to warm us and cook on, and kerosene lamps and candles for light. Luckily, I had a sofa-bed we could sleep on, but it was still horrible having to go to the bathroom in the freezing cold.
When we lost power the first year here (before putting a gas heater in the back of the house) I would use the ash bucket to at least take the chill off the bathroom. When you empty the wood stove into the metal ash bucket, set it on an upside-down-metal-brownie-pan in the bathtub. The radiant heat will at least take the frost out of the bathroom and make it more comfortable when you need to go.
What great ideas! I was actually just thinking about this the other day if we had a bad t-storm that knocked power out we would be in trouble as I’m one of those get it as I need it grocery shoppers. It’s been a long time since we’ve stocked up on food.
As for the camping and other things our boys LOVE it (except the bugs) and we need to do it more often! Now – the whole catch your own fish thing is all fine and dandy but I’d love to know who’s gonna clean it 🙂
Just a simple how to act in an emergency situation by staying calm and focused goes a very long way.
Here’s what we did to help our computer addicted kids: We sold the house in town, bought land in the country, bought an old camper and have spent the entire summer off-grid clearing the land and setting up a mini home. The kids got used to going to the stream daily for jugs of water to wash and use the toilet with. Intermittent power with the generator (until we got temporary power hooked up, yay). Internet via my cell phone as a wifi router (no bandwidth consuming YouTube or Netflix). We haven’t had running water all summer, so showers have been with those solar heated shower bags, which I have grown to actually like quite a bit – especially knowing that the water was free, and so was heating it. Cooking has been mostly barbeque. When we finally move into the new house in a week or so, I expect they will appreciate things like water from a tap, electric stoves, a freezer, and hot water.
you Hollis Bartlett are my hero ! i would love to do for my children what you have done ..
I love your ideas! I would add teaching (age appropriate) children how to start a fire with and without matches. How long to boil water so it is safe. How to find shelter in the wild. Animal footprints and what to look for. Teach children about going to the bathroom without a toilet. This can be quite a surprise in a dire situation. I am a single mom and I am teaching my 10 year old son all about this. He is really good at surviving a weekend in the wilderness living in a tent, not toilet, solar shower, and cooking over a fire. He is comfortable with it. He knows how to use a pocket knife, a compass and track wildlife and identify edible plants vs non-edibles. You never know when a situation may come up and you have to live in the wilderness. Even not having to live in the wilderness these are still good skills to have in any emergency.
When my kids go to my in-laws they have a much more “rustic” living experience and I love the they have seen these types of situations so they will be better prepared for unusual times or emergencies that come up.
1. How about teaching how to build a simple emergency shelter. 2. Putting together survival backpacks for every family member, containing a loud whistle, solar blanket, rain poncho that with a long bungee cord could become a tent, etc…
Shelter is so important! Great point on teaching kids to use materials on hand to accomplish a task.
Great ideas and Dawn Shue kudos to you. My son is 15 and I was doing the same thing 8 years ago. Then we stepped it up a notch and we purchase some land in Northern Idaho site unseen and upon arriving set up an 8′ x 14′ canvas wall tent where my husband, myself, our high functioning autistic son, two dogs and Mr. Bear the hamster lived for 8 1/2 months while we built our home. Just like Hollis above mentioned the kids certainly learn to appreciate things once they have lived this way. The funny thing is that we would all do it again… Living so traditionally really takes you back to your roots and what a gratifying lifestyle with such an amazing reward to have our house that we built with the hands the good Lord blessed us with…. In addition to fire, shelter, water and water purification, you should also consider teaching them how to trap food and how to use a gun, how to create survival tools from their surroundings, learning your edible plants was mentioned and is so important because we are surrounded by great edibles and ways to keep warm in colder situations being sure not to sweat too much that you affect your core temperature. Bug out packs are great to keep handy so you know that you have everything you need at your finger tips in an emergency. In addition to finding food they should also know how to clean and prepare it. Shelters and shelter locations can be important and being certain you are near a good water source. With starting fires it is also essential that they are aware of what is good fire tinder and also what to use or how to start fires in various weather (this could save their lives)… An extreme thought is also knowing how to tan and make clothing out of animal hides. The wilderness is our backyard so we don’t only educate, but we live this way… By choice that is… 🙂 We are off-grid and living traditionally and in some ways very primitively…
By the way Robin, nice site….