Home / The guide / Know-how

Teach children age-appropriate skills

Children who have real jobs are safer, calmer and more useful in a long outage. Build skills step by step with age.

How

1. Ages 2 to 5: pick up toys, help set the table, water plants, feed pets with help (Children's Wisconsin; University of Arkansas Extension).
2. Ages 6 to 9: wash dishes, help with meal prep, weed the garden, care for pets (Children's Wisconsin).
3. Ages 10 to 12: wash laundry, make easy meals, help watch younger siblings; by 12, cook a complete meal and do simple home repairs with guidance (University of Arkansas Extension).
4. 13 and over: cook meals alone and take on supervised skills from this module, such as first aid courses that accept teens, Teen CERT (about 20 hours, US), 4-H projects, radio licence study and backup roles in the skills plan.
5. Use structured material: Ready Kids (US) offers a youth emergency preparedness curriculum in four grade bands from grades 1 to 12.
6. Teach every child what to do in an emergency: where to go, who to find, how to use the radio (continuity-22 covers routine and morale).

Safety: Keep children away from chainsaws, fuel, generators, deep water and animal pens unless supervised (safety-21).

Do these first

• continuity-22

Sources

1. How to assign age-appropriate chores to children. Children's Wisconsin, accessed 2026-11
2. Appropriate chores by age. University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, accessed 2026-11
3. Teen CERT brochure. Ready.gov (FEMA), accessed 2026-11
4. Youth Emergency Preparedness Curriculum (Ready Kids). Ready.gov (FEMA), accessed 2026-11
5. 4-H projects: all projects. Washington State University Extension 4-H, accessed 2026-11

Open in the interactive guide