Posts Tagged ‘Family’
Make Gardening a Family Event
Make Gardening a Family Event
Show them how much you enjoy gardening. Spend time in your garden. It is especially easy to stimulate a child’s interests when they see you having fun.
Make gardening easy. Don’t expect a perfect garden. Allow your family to work at their own pace and within their attention spans and age range, especially children.
Dig it! Kids love to dig. This is a great way to teach the basics while letting them play and just have fun.
Let them play an active role in planning. Take your children to the local nursery and let them pick seeds or transplants to start their garden. Take your time and let them browse and enjoy all of the beautiful plants.
Grow a theme garden. This is a great way to let your children use their imagination and express their creativity. The sky is the limit. Some great ideas are gardens that coincide with the holidays, alphabet gardens, a garden themed in their favorite colors, a sensory garden where you can experience different smells, tastes, textures and sights, or a “Freedom Garden”.
Give children their own “kid sized” tools. They don’t have to be expensive. You can go with an old spoon and a bucket that you have around the house or you can venture down to the garden center and purchase garden tools made for children’s hands.
Give them a space to call their own. It doesn’t have to be big. This will teach them ownership and responsibility, and your children will be able to take credit for their own little space.
Get crafty! Press or dry flowers to make a beautiful arrangement, make potpourri, or make a pomander ball. Children love making things and will be amazed at the crafts and gifts that they can make from the garden.
Grow a vegetable garden. Your children will be amazed that they can grow their own food. Be sure to use organic pesticides.
Use gardening to brush up your children’s math and science skills. Let them count the seeds they are planting, or teach them how plants are living things. Not only will you capture their attention, you will be polishing their skills as you go.
Have a contest. Kids love to be rewarded. Be sure to give each child a reward; the biggest tomato, the prettiest flower, or perhaps the best tasting herbs (a little Spray-N-Grow will help!)
Don’t try to do it all! Pick a few of these tips that you know are best for your family and have fun with them. After all, gardening is meant to be fun and easy. And with a little help, something the whole family can enjoy.
Home Improvement – A Family Project
When you want to get a project of new home improvement done, you can combine home improvement with a great improvement in family relationships if you take the opportunity of involving your whole family into the project. Even if it is a matter of just painting the walls with a fresh coat of paint, it provides a great event for the family and friends to come together and enjoy a roaring time. Yes, redecorating can be hugely enjoyed! Everyone can do home improvement jobs, young or old, male or female! Obviously, it is not a very good idea to involve small children into too much work.
When you approach everyone for help, you will surely get all sorts of excuses and complaints from them but you have to be really skillful and make them take a guilt trip for offering so many ridiculous excuses. Rest assured, they will come around to help in your project. A project of home is a huge task and you can make do with all the help you will get, especially from your family and friends. It will save you from paying exhorbitant rates that professional home improvement people will charge.
A project of home improvement could be either a small one of a simple paint slapping or a big one like changing the heating system. Every project of home improvement is very important irrespective of whether it is small or big and should be carefully done with due consideration for members of the family living in the home. You must discuss every project with all the members of the family and their views also deserve consideration, unless you are in a state of mind where you do not care about what they think. A project of home improvement is an important topic, More so if it is a big one with a lot of investment which also involves much work.
While enlisting help for your project of home improvement, it would be better to be choosy as slack people or those who are not on the same wavelength as you are regarding the project will mostly prove to be an impediment to the job on hand. They will either slow down the job or it will get messed up, preventing you from achieving what you set out to do. It is also important that you keep yourselves free for a few days or for however long it takes to finish the job, as leaving the job unfinished will defeat the purpose of the home improvement project. Contractors should never be asked to come if you are unable to pay them. A home improvement project is undertaken to enliven your home life and it should never bog you down with worries or bills. It should prove to be a joy from start to finish!
Protecting Your Family and Home From the Dangers of Lightening
Protecting Your Family and Home From the Dangers of Lightening
As the seasons change, so do the elements and storms we are exposed to. This time of year, hurricanes and flooding rains are major problems we face. A by-product of these mysterious weather phenomenon is lightning. A lightning storm, also known as an electrical storm, can be extremely dangerous and destroy a home with a single blow. These erratic ribbons of energy seek to find refuge by kissing the earth with a tremendous force of energy and destroying anything that may be in its path.
At any particular moment, there are over 1,800 thunderstorms in progress somewhere around the globe and 25 million bolts of lightning reach out of the sky, coming in contact with the ground, annually.
Watching a good lightning storm zigzag across the sky is an awesome visual experience. The ominous electrical displays are extraordinary to watch. But, these displays of dancing energy come with a destructive power that steals more lives and causes more damage than floods, hurricanes and tornadoes – combined.
There is a way you can help to protect your home from being destroyed by these flashes of energy. Installing a lightning protection system can provide a path for the lightning to follow into the ground and help to direct it from melting the shielding in your homes electrical system and taking out the electronics and appliances plugged into your outlets. These systems do not prevent lightning from striking nor do they attract it, but help to direct its energy out of harms way.
Lightning protection systems that meet the latest standard requirements are considered to be 99% effective by Underwriters Laboratories. These systems can be partially concealed on the exterior or completely concealed during construction.
If lightning strikes the ground, it can affect whatever is within a 60 foot radius and 10 times that area, if it strikes water and can be lethal. On average, it can strike over 50 times within a quarter-mile of your home and is the leading cause of fires in suburban and rural areas.
There are several factors to determine if your home is at risk:
1. If your home is located in an open area
2. If lightning strikes were reported or seen within close proximity
3. If your home is located in an elevated area, like a mountain.
4. If you do not have a system to safely direct the path of electricity into the ground
A Few Lightning Facts
· A lightning bolt can travel from 25 – 45 miles horizontally prior to hitting the ground and can be from 6 to 8 miles in length.
· The size of a bolt is about 1 – 2 inches in diameter with the surrounding light making it seem a lot larger.
· A single bolt of lightning can become up to 5 times the heat of the sun and carries with it 1 billion volts of current and up to 20,000 amperes.
· The Empire State Building is struck by lightning over 100 times per year.
· Most lightning strikes occurs between 12 noon and 4 PM
In homes located where sandy soil conditions are prevalent, more elaborate systems are necessary. Sand is dryer than normal soil and does not conduct electricity in the same way that moist soil does. For areas with sandy soil conditions there is a system that dissipates the energy over more of an area than the simple lightening rod, cable and clamp system.
Although the rod and cable system is easier than the more elaborate systems, for the best results and to ensure that you meet the requirements for a lower deductible and discounted premium from your insurance carrier, have a licensed professional evaluate and install the best system to protect you, your family and your home.
To get your copy of Hector’s book,
What Your Parent’s Never Told You About Owning a Home