Safety

Field Trip
We started out Safety week with a field trip to the fire station. Thanks to all you you who came! The kids had a great time. We started with a video about fire safety that talked about having a plan to get out of your house in case of a fire. The fire fighter also taught us about not playing with fire and matches to stay safe, and we practiced Stop Drop and Roll and calling 911 in an emergency. Then we got to tour the Fire Station! Most kids liked it, and others were nervous. It can be a scary thing, and fires can be scary to kids, but I think it helps to meet the firefighters and see that they're nice and there to help you. Especially when they show the kids what they look like in their full gear, they're showing the kids that if they come to help them dressed that way, they can trust them. Some kids took a turn to drive the truck and hold the hose. We also got fire hats they all thought were cool! We ate snack at the park and played a few minutes on the Fire Station playground too. Back at school, the kids got some free play time before we did small groups.

Dramatic Play
We played Fire Station all week. I had more fire fighter coats this year and that made it a lot of fun! They had lots of fun dressing up and playing firefighters all week, and I think it was great to go to the fire station first so they could see what they do.
 
I even made oxygen tanks by spray painting pop bottles yellow.




The second week, after they had learned and practiced calling 911 and being dispatchers, their play really expanded with them using the phones to call and giving an address to the firefighters. There were pictures of houses on the wall in the block area with numbers, and they were good at giving those numbers as their address. Learning math and life skills in play!


 

Blocks
The block area had a doll house the first week, with dolls and some firefighters. My firefighters were about half the size of the dolls, but they didn't seem to mind! They had some great make believe play!
 

The second week we had out the car mat and cars. Both were a great extension of the fire station, as the kids used them together to put out fires in the doll house and in the buildings on the car mat.

Art
We played play dough.
We made collages with glue and a variety of different things to glue on our papers.
We made fall leaves for our tree. We did marble painting, by rolling marbles in paint, then dropping them in large cans with our papers inside. We shook the cans to spread the paint, then took our papers out when they were ready. Once they dried, I cut out the fall leaf shape and added them to our classroom tree.
 
 



I somehow forgot to get a pic of the finished tree!

We also finger painted. I tried this recipe, but it didn't turn out great. It kinda dried to a gelatin consistency. I added more water and stirred more and it worked, but it was lumpy. The kids still enjoyed it and it was a great sensory experience (like our gelatin molds), but I don't think I'll use it again.

Small Manips
We did 2 different fire fighter floor puzzles.
We played a community helpers game and did a community helpers floor puzzle.

Outside
We had wheat in the sensory table, and added the firefighters to it the second week.
We also had out balls and other toys.
The kids are loving the swing set and spend most of the time swinging and sliding!

Snacks
Besides the regular snack rotations, we made traffic lights for snack one day. The kids spread their frosting on their graham crackers, then added skittles to make it a traffic light.

 
 

Songs
We learned 2 new songs, one about fire trucks one about calling 911.

Hurry, hurry, drive that fire truck,
Hurry, hurry, drive that fire truck,
Hurry, hurry, drive that fire truck,
Other verses:
Hurry, hurry, turn that corner
climb the ladder
squirt the hoses
Slowly, slowly, back to the fire house

911 (tune of Bingo)
There is a number you can call when you need someone's help.
You call 911, you call 911, you call 911 when you need someone's help!

Large Group
Day 1 was the field trip.
Day 2 we had eaten our traffic lights for snack, and learned more about them in large group. We read about traffic safety, then played Red Light Green Light.
Day 3 we read about Playground Safety, and did a safety experiment on our playground. We took 2 apples outside. We made predictions about what would happen if we dropped them on the grass and cement. Then we did it. The one dropped on grass had nothing happen to it. The one that I dropped on the cement broke open and juice came out, which they immediately connected to being blood if it was them that fell. We talked about the safest place to run on our playground, and they knew it was the grass because if they fell, the wouldn't cut their knee open and bleed.
 
Day 4 we read a Sesame Street safety book and wrote in our journals how we can stay safe.

Small Group
I taught the kids about calling 911. We practiced using real phones, and one child got to be the dispatcher while another called to report an emergency. We also talked about what emergencies are that we would need to call 911, and times when we shouldn't. As with most lessons this week, I emphasized with the kids that they are small enough there should always be an adult or baby sitter watching them who would know what to do in an emergency and they could count on them to know if they needed to call 911.

Our mom volunteers read an interactive safety book to the kids that posed different situations, and the kids got to pick the safest answer. They pushed the button to see if their answer was right. I was so glad to have small groups to get to use this book, since they love having turns to push the buttons and that's hard to do in large group!

Week 2, I read the kids a book about strangers and we talked about "stranger danger." Hopefully you read my other blog post about Strangers with links to great articles on how to talk to our kids about this topic. We talked about the situations in the book and what would be safe (like not wandering off from our parents and finding a "safe" stranger like a mom with kids or a cashier or police officer if we did get lost).

Our mom volunteers played a community helpers game with the kids, and also helped them place ambulance cards with numbers 1-10 in order.

Our Community

The 2 obvious highlights of this week, were our 2 field trips. What better way to learn about our community, than actually get out of the school?
Petco was so fun, and they were so crazy excited about the fish! They seriously would have been thrilled, had that been the whole field trip! We also saw lizards, frogs, turtles, and tarantulas, and even got to pet the bearded dragon lizard. We also got to pet a ferret, and they loved how wiggly and cute he was, and he enjoyed sniffing all of us! We then watched the birds, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rats, and mice before looking at the cats before we left. They were all so well-behaved and we had so much fun!
The fire station was awesome too. The guys at South Davis Metro Fire here in Bountiful did such a good job with the kids. We watched a cartoon about fire safety and getting out of your house, then got our tour. We got to watch a fireman slide down the pole too. We got to check out the big truck and they let us touch everything, which we did! Everyone who wanted got a turn to "drive" the truck, and we got a group pic in the front. We even saw a fireman coming back from a job, still all dressed up in his gear. It was a little scary, but he was so nice. We each got a hat and a badge and it was so great!

We had such a short time after snack for free play before large group, and here's a few things we did:

Fire Station dramatic play

I got all the pictures from a training on dramatic play years ago and they were great. The kids loved the pictures of the real fires. I helped the kids the first day with the different roles like home owner, fire fighter/chief, and dispatcher. They were so cute as they'd call each other to tell the dispatcher their house was on fire, tell them which house, then the fire fighter kids would come spray it out. A simple thing like pictures of houses with house numbers, and the papers that matched them for the dispatcher were so great for their play and for extended math and literacy in the center. I helped them read the numbers, and fine the house and circle it on the paper so the fire fighters knew where to go. They have great imaginations and it was a great time for me to talk to them about calling 911, knowing your house number, and knowing that fire fighters will keep you safe and help you. Since at 3 years old, kids rarely know their phone numbers and addresses (and as many pointed out, don't know the passwords to unlock their parents' phones) we talked about how grown ups would help us get out of the house and call 911 because we always have someone older watching and taking care of us. This was a fun center and they loved it and spent most of their time playing here, especially right after being at the fire station. We even had a few fires in the igloo that they had to run over and put out.

Puzzles
We had 2 different fire truck floor puzzles and several community helper puzzles. They are getting better and better at figuring out how to put them together, and we always get a group helping, so we are learning to cooperate too.

Playdough
Just a favorite that's always asked for and played with almost daily.

Large Group
We read about heroes in our community and how "every day" people, like our neighbors, can be heroes. We talked about different jobs that people have and what they do to help us.
We read about a girl who wants to be a fire fighter like her dad.
We made patterns with community helpers' hats.
We practiced fire safety by learning to not play with anything that lights on fire, and to crawl low on the ground to get out of a fire. We practiced crawling to the door to get out of school if there were ever a fire, and I reassured them (over and over) I would always take care of them and we would be safe if something like that happened, as long as they listened and obeyed.

They had so many questions and concerns about getting out of their houses in a fire, like they saw in the video at the fire station, and I just reassured them their parents would always take care of them. It made me realize how important it is to have a plan in place and let them know what you'd do to get out of your house if you had a fire. It took me back to my own elementary school days and learning to have a family plan and being so scared! I encourage you all to talk to your kids about it and develop a family plan. We're going to be doing that here. It's about time I listen to the great advice from those fire fighters!