Make A Plan Monday: Fire Preparedness

No person that I know of would want their house to catch fire and burn down.  But, it is still wise to make a plan on what to do if it does.  For Family Home Evening, or otherwise as a family, counsel together about what your family can and will do if such a tragedy of a house fire were to happen.  Plan and teach fire safety, escape routes, plan a meeting place, and plan for recovery.

PLAN ESCAPE & MEETING PLACE:  every person in your home who can understand the dangers of a fire and move him/herself to another location should learn and know how to leave through doors or windows.  If bedrooms are on a second or third floor, there are ladders made for fire escape from an upstairs window.  Show how to exit through a window--and let them know that in a fire, if they need to break the window to get out--to do it!  Plan at least one place far enough away from the house that smoke and fire aren't a danger.  If you have a big fenced in yard, it could be in a far corner of the yard, as corners are easier to locate and find in the dark.  Think about which areas of the home family members are most likely to be in and plan a meeting place on that side of the house if possible.  If in an apartment/condo, choose a location in the parking lot or by the mailboxes (if they are in a separate area from the building on fire).

Write down your family escape plan.  Also, it is wise to notify a neighbor or family/friend that is close by about your plan.  Most local fire stations will gladly share fire safety tips and allow for tours where children and adults alike can learn what to do in a fire; call ahead and find out what their guidelines for tours and such are.

PRACTICE:  as a family periodically have fire drills where everyone can practice leaving the home and meeting up at the meeting place.  You can either plan these ahead or do random drills to really test everyone's knowledge.  To make it a little more real, invite a family member or friend to call randomly and notify you that you have 1 minute to leave your home for a fire drill.

PLAN RECOVERY:  Many people pay for fire/home or renter's insurance to help cover costs of items lost in a fire, others plan on simply replacing items over time as they are able.  Whether you carry insurance or not, though, a plan for what to do immediately after a house fire is needed.  Where will you live?  How will you meet basic needs of shelter, food, clothing?  What about documents and such that may have been lost in the fire, did you have a plan for replacing those that can be or reproducing them before a fire and having more than one copy?  Who will be notified of your loss?  How will you handle the emotional side of a house fire?  Do you have a good support system of family and friends?  Making a plan of how you will pull through a house fire tragedy, and possibly even loss of loved ones, will help should that time come that a plan needs to be used.  Without a plan, besides the loss of both things both physical and emotional, on top of everything you'll have to decide what to do, how to do it, etc.

No amount of planning and preparing for disaster ever really makes the disaster a breeze to go through, but it does help at least the emotional side of things to have thought it out and planned to the best we could.  The disaster very well may destroy any physical preparations, but I believe with physical, emotional and spiritual preparation we are better prepared to endure it well.

Miscellaneous Monday: Alternative Cooking FHE games

Today I will be sharing some more alternative cooking FHE games.  See Saturday's post for a handout that has a simple Family Home Evening alternative cooking outline.

These games are more challenging than the matching game I shared on Saturday.  Have fun!
So here goes...first will be the game, the second of each group is the answer key.



Alternative Cooking Word Search:  The words can be found forwards, backwards, diagonal, horizontal and vertical.

Alternative Cooking Scrambled Word Tiles:  

Alternative Cooking Scrambled Word Tiles2:

Alternative Cooking Crossword:

Alternative Cooking Scrambled Words:

Saturday School: Alternative Cooking

Today I will be sharing a handout from the most recent alternative cooking class I taught (I taught it today in fact!).  This is very similar to one I shared last year, but with what I think is a very cool difference:  this one I added a Family Home Evening outline for teaching about temporal preparedness and such, this one is specific to powerless cooking, but the idea can be used for other temporal preparedness FHEs.  This is just a simple FHE, you can make up your own, but I wanted to make it a little easier by creating one that is simple and can be used with both young and old children or with just adults.  Hope this helps!  I know having family home evening is very important, I know it blesses and helps each family member.

In the FHE activity for this topic, I mention doing a matching game with young children, in the class I taught I didn't include a matching game as part of the handout--I really wanted to keep the handout to 1 page, but here is a quick one I put together using my own pictures.  You can use your own pictures or graphics and make your own.  Below the handout is the powerless cooking matching game that I made.

There are lots of methods to use for cooking food without electricity.  Choose the methods that you can and want to use, then budget for them--either make your own or buy commercially made ones.  Some methods can be bought for cheap at thrift stores, garage sales or at end of season clearance/sales.  Other items do come on sale periodically--like sun ovens tend to come on sale yearly around June-Aug, but occasionally other times of the year too.  Remember to be safe, to know how to use something and become familiar with it by practicing using it so that when you may have to use during emergencies, you know how to safely and effectively use it.

So here is the most recent Cooking without Electricity class handout, you can click on it and enlarge it for printing:

And the matching game, simply print it out and cut up each picture or section, glue onto construction paper or cardstock that has been all cut to the same size and laminate if you want.  Match the method with the fuel--or in the case of the wonder box oven or ice-chest oven match with the insulator--the bean bag filling or pillows.

I hope this information helps!

First Aid Friday: 72 hour/Emergency Kit

For those who live along the coast, including the low-country, hurricane season is almost here.  So today I wanted to send a reminder to gather, inspect, rotate and otherwise make sure disaster supplies and such are in place and in working and usable condition.

Below are some sites that have information about hurricanes and what to include in a disaster supply kit.  Also is a link to some activities for kids.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/prepare/supply_kit.shtml

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/basics.shtml

http://www.ready.gov/kids

These talk about the basics in preparing for possible natural disasters, including a first aid kit.

Some ideas on using the next few weeks to prepare as a family for hurricane season (or other natural disasters):

Have family nights (Family Home Evenings) to discuss what types of natural or other disasters your family could possibly face and what you can do to prepare to lesson the effects of it on your family.  Assign family members to specific duties--an example of this is if there is an evacuation notice for whatever reason, who will grab what, what is most important to grab--that way you have a plan rather than last minute panic.  See a great video, on youtube or here:  http://pgward.org/ep/archives/468, of a mock evacuation that someone put together (the video on pgward is the same one as on youtube).  The video compares 2 families--one that planned for possible evacuation and one that didn't.

As part of the family night or as part of another activity gather your supplies--you can make it fun by doing scavenger hunts, or races to gather the supplies.  Have a packing race--see who can pack their disaster kit the fastest or the best, etc.  

Be sure to inventory your supplies so you know what you have and what you may still need, and can watch for sales on those items--like right now Publix has a buy one get one free deal on its brand of acetaminophen.  And some other stores have some sales on bottled water.  Many camping and backpacking supplies work well for disaster supplies.  As part of your inventory, you may want to indicate which bag or container the supplies are in if each bag contains different items--like when trying to distribute weight for various ages and abilities within the family.

Below is a handout I put together a while back for a RS meeting, that I shared in this post, but thought I'd share it again.

Here is another video on youtube that talks about the need to prepare, please note it isn't made or produced by the church.  I think the person who did put it together did a tasteful and good job of reminding us that there is hope in being faithful and obedient to the counsel we receive from prophets and leaders to prepare ourselves and our families, that with trials that we all do and will face, we can and need to prepare spiritually and temporally.