Teaching Survival Skills to Kids at Home.

Teaching survival skills to kids at home is not only practical but also empowers them with valuable knowledge for life. By incorporating fun and educational activities into everyday routines, parents can instill confidence and resilience in their children. In this blog post, I'll explore various survival skills that kids can learn at home, ensuring they are well-prepared for outdoor adventures and unexpected situations.

Basic First Aid:

Teaching kids basic first aid skills is crucial for handling minor injuries and emergencies. Start with simple lessons on treating cuts, bruises, and burns. Show them how to clean and bandage wounds, and discuss when to seek help from an adult or medical professional. When they have the basics down move on to more advanced techniques like how to spot signs of dehydration, heat exhaustion, hypothermia, allergic reactions, and so on.

Navigation and Map Reading:

Navigation is far more than just a survival skill, navigation and map reading skills can help your children throughout their lives. Introduce your kids to the basics of navigation and map reading by letting them navigate you home by following road signs, and creating treasure hunts or scavenger hunts around the house or backyard. Teach them how to read maps, judge distance with their gait, use a compass, and identify landmarks. These skills will come in handy during outdoor excursions or if they ever find themselves lost.

Shelter Building:

Encourage creativity and problem-solving skills by building shelters and forts indoors using blankets, pillows, and furniture. Teach kids about different types of shelters, such as lean-tos and A-frames, make it extra fun by putting a T.V. or a laptop in the fort so they can watch a move in their shelter and after discuss the importance of shelter for protection from the elements.

Fire Safety and Building:

Teach kids about fire safety rules and demonstrate how to build and extinguish a controlled fire in a safe environment, such as a backyard fire pit or grill. If they are ready for it, put them in charge of maintaining a fire, feeding it and keeping it from dying.

Knot Tying:

Introduce kids to basic knot tying techniques using household items like shoelaces or pieces of rope. Teach them essential knots like the square knot, bowline, and clove hitch feel free to show them your favorite knots, emphasizing their practical applications for securing items and building shelters.

Water Purification:

Discuss the importance of clean water and teach kids how to purify water using simple methods like boiling or filtering. Conduct experiments with different filtration materials and demonstrate how to test water for safety.

Foraging and Plant Identification:

Take kids on nature walks to explore local flora and fauna, teaching them how to identify edible plants and berries safely. Discuss the importance of proper identification and caution against consuming unknown or poisonous plants. A fun experiment is walking around your neighborhood and identifying how many toxic plants people grow in their yards.

Emergency Preparedness:

Involve kids in creating their own emergency kits for the home, including essential items like first aid supplies, non-perishable food, water, flashlights, and batteries. Discuss emergency procedures and practice drills for fires, intruders, earthquakes etc. to ensure everyone knows what to do in case of an emergency.

Outdoor Cooking:

Teach kids basic outdoor cooking skills by involving them in meal preparation over a campfire or grill. Help them make a tin foil dinner and some peach cobbler, show them how to safely check on their food so they don't get burned.

Wilderness Survival Scenarios:

Engage kids in role-playing scenarios to simulate real-life wilderness survival situations. Encourage critical thinking and decision-making skills by presenting challenges like getting lost in the woods or encountering wildlife. I have found that doing this as a choose your own adventure story time, or playing a table top role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons work well to get these points across.

Teaching survival skills to kids at home is a rewarding experience that equips them with valuable knowledge and confidence for outdoor adventures and unexpected situations. By incorporating fun and educational activities into everyday routines, parents can empower their children to navigate the world with resilience and resourcefulness.