We all think food, shelter, protection as the top 3 for long-term preparedness but what about something for the kids?

Power out for a week or two weeks could drive kids CRAZY who are used to TV, Nintendo, etc.

What are you doing to prepare your kids?

(I don't have kids, and mine won't be glued to the TV 24/7 so I can't offer much input on the subject but hoped to get some information.)

My .02, I save all the magazine subscriptions for the future as I don't even read them all now. We get ~ 30 different magazines a month (I used to sell them and wholesale is cheap)

What do you have 'prepared' for your kids to do with no power?

Board games, card games, puzzles, books, pets. You know, the sort of stuff kids played with before video games.

-Blast

Been there. During the last ice storm I was out for a week. We had portable dvd players for both kids that we would watch during the evening and I would take to work and charge or charge at relatives. My daughter had a Nintendo DS, also rechargeable and my son had an earlier version. We played board games, card games and read books. I also had a small b/w battery tv, so my daughter didn't go into shock from no electronics. I actually enjoyed the whole family huddled around a 9" b/w picture with the fire roaring, hot cocoa from the coleman stove.

An extended power out is the prfect time to teach survival skills. Knot tieing, tent building and inventing things in general or just talking and telling stories. My mom used to keep a box next to her sewing machine, she kept empty spools and anything we could use to build with in it. On rainy days she would give us about a foot long piece of a 2x4, some paneling nails, scraps of material, thread and about a dozen empty spools and a hammer. We made boats to use when the rain stopped. We could spend a whole day building and improving our boats. They were more like barges but it was fun. We didn't watch normally much T.V. and we didn't have video games so we didn't miss it.

Hmm....

IF (big if) I ever have kids, books, games, and the like would be around. But I remember when I was a rug rat, I got tasked with being a go-fer and runner a lot. Best way to learn the difference between various kinds of tools and fasteners is fetching them, and if you have the wrong one it's a long walk back to the workshop. :P Also learned to sew and cook that way.

Almost every hand held electronic item we all use (game systems included) have 12-volt charger. Most things run from 6-volts and the car chargers step the 12-volts down to the 6-volts needed to charge and run the game or electronic item.

I have a palm pilot and it runs on 5.2 volts, this is close enough to 6-volts. I made a 4-d battery pack that will charge and run my palm pilot for over a month of use, it just happens it’s the same voltage and plug type to charge my cell phone, so I get double use out of it.

Doing something like this can keep your kids games up and running for a long time. Add a solar charger for D-Batteries and you have power indefinitely. You do have to part out a car charger to make one of these, and lots of people seem unwilling to chop up a $20.00 item, but it never bothered me to do it if it gives me something I want or need.

Here is a picture of the D battery pack I was talking about, it will run the pictured phone and Palm Pilot.

If you don’t know how to make one of these, any TV repair shop guy can make it for you. or e-mail me and I may be able to talk you through it. The D battery holder (Also these battery holders come in C & AA size batteries if space is important) is less then $3.00 at any Radio Shack. With it, a car charger and a soldering iron and some hot melt glue you will be able to run anything electronic for months.

+1 on board and card games. Me and DW have at least two dozen games in our closet that we enjoy playing, even when the power is still available. When we go over to my brothers house we normally bring a game or two over and make a big family night of it. Our latest aquisition, "ZOMBIES!!!" is a favorite right now, even our 10 year old neice plays it and loves it.

-Bill Liptak

I think one of the best things my husband and I continue to do is to make sure that our kids aren't dependant on electronics. Our kids are quite happy to be unplugged. In fact, I think they prefer it.

Family hikes and board games are their two favourites, followed closely by playing cards, building stuff, working on the (real) family cars, putting together puzzles. TOGETHER - they really like TOGETHER!

Our 17 year old loves chatting with her friends on-line but she's even happier in her room creative writing or reading. And the only thing our 5 year old loves more than hiking is playing with his toy cars, superheroes and lego. Electronics (tv, games, etc.) excite him at first but he bores of them quickly. IMAGINATION - they really love to use their IMAGINATIONS!

We've got a good stash of stuff for them in our emergency supplies. The added bonus? They're both happy to play by the light of a headlamp or oil lantern.

My 3 SSs (Strappin' Sons) enjoy books, games like dominoes, dice, cards, Uno, Skip-bo as well as board games. They also have some "low tech" hobbies like woodcarving and drawing that would work too.

I don’t see anything wrong with kids using electronic toys. We all live a different life then people did even 25-years ago. I will bet everyone here has a cell phone, 25-years ago only the super rich had them. My grandmother use to say she would never have one of those newfangled things in her kitchen (the microwave.) real cooks use a range and an oven.

Times change.

While my son and I enjoy doing a lot of non-electronic things, we also enjoy the electronics. We all do. Before you say you don’t look at what you are doing while typing that denial. It’s not a typewriter you are using, or even worst a pen and paper & a postoffice.

I think while it’s good to have a mix of electronic and non electronic things to do for kids, electronics are a large part of our lives, and if your kids are thrown into an unfamiliar situation the electronic game can be comforting and familiar to a kid. This can mean the world to the parent’s sanity. It’s a good idea to come up with a way to power your electronics when power is in short supply.

We had a roughly similar experience after the ice storm. Our portable DVD player would just barely squeak out one movie on a charge so that was usually the last thing we did before bed in the evenings. Our kids love all their electronic gadgets but we also have a double size closet that is full of nothing but games and arts/crafts. That closet got a pretty thorough workout during that week. I even got a chance to read to the kids which was something we hadn't done much of in a while. Honestly it was just a camp out in the living room.

My kids were kids before laptops, PDQ's (or thatever those thingies are called), etc. It was TV or nothing. But they apparently got some of my genes, they both loved to read, and we always had a lot of reading material around. A few board and card games rounded it out...

I love to read, my son loves to have books but I never see him reading much.

Abstinence.

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