Month: August 2019

Active Shooter Situation: Teach Your Kids What to Do

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Teach your kids what to do in an active shooter situation

My daughter and I were doing our grocery shopping the other day at Wal-Mart, when this thought popped into my head.

“What would my daughter and I do if an active shooter situation occurred while we were in this store?”

I hesitantly asked her the question. I didn’t want to scare her, but I informed her of the latest mass shootings, one being in a Wal-Mart. 

She looked at me with innocent eyes, and said, “I don’t know”. 

 

With both of us being in the store, I said what I felt would have been the correct thing to do. 

I told my daughter, “You get down, you hide. Let’s stand here and look around for possible places to hide.”

After she and I discussed some possibilities, we finished our errands and headed home.

Teach your kids what to do in an active shooter event

After we got home, I decided I needed to look into this further and see if the advice I gave my daughter was true.  And guess what, I was wrong.

 

According to https://www.ready.gov/active-shooter, the very first thing we should always do is:

Be Prepared by Assessing Your Environment

  1. Know where the emergency exits and employee exits are located.
  2. Know where to hide safely
  3. Know the normal environment, so you can identify things or people that are out of the ordinary.

Be Prepared by Brainstorming Your Plan of Action

Teach your kids what to do in an active shooter situation

When you’re ready to practice with your child, STOP.

  1. Look around.
  2. Can you get to the exit safely from where you are?
  3. If not, where can you hide either temporarily or for a long period of time.

Be Prepared if You Can't Run

  1. Do not hide in groups (larger groups are easier to find)
  2. Silence your phone
  3. Stay still and quiet
  4. Stay out of view of the shooter
  5. Only come out when police officers say the area is all clear

Be Prepared for After the Situation

  1. When coming out of hiding, keep your hands visible so the police can see them.
  2. There may be wounded and upset people around
  3. Get help for dealing with a traumatic situation

Be Prepared Now for a Worse Case Scenario

Even though this is difficult to think about, what will happen to you when you die?

There is only one of two places that you will go. Heaven or Hell.

Both of these places are very real. 

The Bible describes hell as being a fiery place of constant torment, where you burn but don’t burn up. You will also cry and gnash or grind your teeth together in agony.  You will be totally separated from God.

 

Spending eternity with God, on the other hand, is a completely different place. A wonderful place where there is no crying, pain, or sadness. A place filled with beautiful colors and mansions of gold. 

How to Spend Eternity with Jesus

  1.  Know that there cannot be any sin in heaven.
  2. Since we are sinners, we cannot get into heaven on our own.
  3. Jesus Christ was perfect, sent by God, to be the only way that we can get to heaven.
  4. Jesus died on the cross, taking our sin on himself, shedding His perfect blood, covering the sins in our lives.
  5. We must have faith and believe that Jesus did this for us, and that He was buried and rose again three days later. He now is in heaven with God.
  6.  Have faith that Jesus will be coming again to take those of us that have believed in Him, to heaven, to live eternally. 

Conclusion

Talking about scary situations is not easy, but it is important.  Being prepared could save your life. 

Please share this information with others. It could save their lives too.

Teach your kids what to do in an active shooter situation

This video, created by the government, is for adults who find themselves in this type of situation.  

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Homeschool Tips to Keep Your Child Focused

Leave a Comment / Homeschooling Tips, Printable / By
Help your child stay focused with these homeschooling tips

The morning has been going great. You’re right on schedule. The kids are all quiet, seated nicely, doing their schoolwork…..except for that One. 

What are you going to do with him? 

He’s just not able to keep his mind on his work. If only he’d quit looking around , he’d be able to get something done.

Does this sound familiar? It does to me. I’ve had to deal with these types of problems with all of my kids, and here are some tips to help your child concentrate and stay focused to the task at hand. 

If you’d like to have a printable sheet with these tips already typed up, just click here for your free printable. 

 

  1. If your child tends to procrastinate on project and paper due dates, try setting a kitchen or cell phone timer. In this way, your child will know that as soon as the timer goes off, he/she can move on to something else.
  1. If your children are easily distracted by noise and people, try having them use earplugs when they do their work. Also, remove or turn off the tv, radio, computer, notifications, phone, etc. Avoid windows and people if they must see what others are doing.
  1. If your children can’t concentrate because it’s just too quiet, then try some background white noise, turn on a fan, have instrumental music playing softly in the background. Also, there are plenty of YouTube videos that have hours of library noises, coffee shop noises, etc., that help with having mundane sounds in the background
Help your child stay focused with these homeschooling tips

4. If your child is tired of sitting in one spot to study in, try moving to a different location in the house, or go to a public place altogether, like the library. Sometimes just being out of the house can give renewed energy and focus to the task at hand. It could be something as easy as just going out to sit in the car to do your work.

Help your child stay focused with these homeschooling tips
  1. If your child can’t complete tasks, try a check off list. Sometimes, just the satisfaction of getting to check something off a list is enough incentive for a child to get something done. Also, a school schedule of what subjects to be working on at what time, can help to focus a child so there are not any extra decisions to be made that will slow him/her up.
  1. If your child gets bored with the same old thing all the time, try using different colors of paper, pens, and highlighters to keep focused and add interest. Who doesn’t love a colorful organized paper to look at? Also, train your child that he/she will do better if they break up a big task into smaller chunks and let them take a five-minute break to get up and stretch.

Longer assignments can be broken up into different times of the day. For instance, do all the odd problems in the morning, and the even ones after lunch. Or, divide it by the front and back of a worksheet.

When trying to focus and learn textbook information, do a little reading, then summarize out loud. Have your child write out their own quiz questions on index cards, for added interest. To make a game of it, challenge your child to see how many questions and index cards he can come up with. 

If you would like these tips already typed up for you, just click here for your free printable. 

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