Fire and Police Safety Week

This week was made up of two days so we made the most of those days by talking about fire and police safety.  We started out with the colors of fire and we mixed them to use our finger tips to write out the alphabet.  Our preschoolers did an amazing job writing their letters.

 We put out the fire in the cup tower by throwing bean bag 'water' at them.  The children helped build and rebuild them once they were knocked down.  

After that we got a special visitor from the fire station to help show us the proper way to stop, drop and roll by covering up our faces and rolling on the ground until all the fire is completely gone from our clothes.

 The fire fighter put on his uniform and talked with the children about why he wears all he does and about a family safety exit plan of where the family should go should there be a fire.  Please be sure to talk with your children and plan out where you want them to meet you should a fire happen at home; a neighbor's house, the mailbox, etc.  

We talked about crawling through the house and feeling the back of the door to see if it is hot and that it is ok to throw things at the window to break it open if their bedroom us upstairs so the fire fighters know they need to come and save them.  

While the conversations we have at school are terrific, allowing the children to practice this plan at home with you is key.  The next time you burn toast and the smoke alarm goes off, take a few minutes and have everyone practice what to do in a real emergency situation.

Once the fire fighter left for the day we created an emergency situation game where the children had to practice dialing 911, telling the responder the emergency and then heading into the kitchen to use the 'fire extinguisher' on the small kitchen fire, then stay low and go through the hula hoop 'smoke' then use the fire hose and put out the flames on the cabinet building.  

 Our first responder preschoolers did a great job matching up the correct band aids to the shape spaced wounds on the paper person images.  The children worked on fine motor skills opening up band aids and placing them down along with the math part of this activity by shape matching.

After helping out the paper people with their band aids, the children worked on driving to the hospital by following the roads made of masking tape on the floor.  This gross motor activity encourages them to crawl throughout the room.  If you have toy cars at home and need something to do on a rainy day then grab some tape and put it on your rug and let your child have a great time!

We worked on our letter recognition this week too when we talked about capitol and lower case letters at the front of the class on our white board and then we sent the kids to the tables to match up police officer partners who had the same letter, just one with a lower case and one with an upper case.

 We learned that we all have something called fingerprints on our fingers and in order to see them better we used ink pads to make finger prints on paper and looked at them in detail using our magnify glasses.  One tip we recommend to you is that you hold on to this paper for safety reasons in case you ever need to access your child's prints for the police.  This is a great thing to hold on to in order to be prepared should you need those details.

 Our police officer visit was terrific after our finger printing activity as she talked with us about how to identify her as an officer and how to find safe people when we might get lost in a store.  We talked about how moms and dads are other safe people to talk to in a store if you get lost and can't find an officer and the ways to find a mom or dad is because they will have children with them.  If your child knows these tips it can keep them safe if they ever find themselves lost in a large store or area.

We talked about gun safety with the police officer and how no child should ever pick up a gun but should get an adult to move it to a safe place.  We had a similar conversation about lighters and matches with our fire fighter as well.  Please review these safety tips with your child as well, it could save his/her life.

 By the end of the week we had the children play a math game reading the numbers on dice to match and color in fire with the same numeral written on the paper.  After math, we made badges to wear and steering wheels to use to drive around the room with a song about being police officers who are on a mission to chase and catch a robber.   

We had a fabulous couple of days learning all about how to be safe children and community members.  We reviewed what to do when we have fire drills but didn't head outside since we practiced this as a school last semester.  Then we practiced a lock down as a class and the children were amazingly quiet in the room while we waiting for the 'officer' to come in and tell us they were not able to hear a peep from us in the hall outside our room.

 What's Coming Up?

• This coming week we will be talking about Spring as we are coming off of egg hunts and hopefully will be starting to see more flowers and lots of baby animals soon too.
  
• There will be no preschool on Friday, April 26th due to a change in the high school schedule.