Field Trip: Fire Station Tour

 Earlier this week we got to go on an awesome field trip with our friends from our Summer Reading Playgroup. We had all missed a public tour of the fire station earlier in the summer, and we were disappointed not to get to go. I decided to look into it, and found out that all that stood between us all and getting our kids into the fire station was a simple online form. We picked a day, got our form turned in, and we were ready to go!

My kids and I were the first ones to get there, so we goofed around while we waited for the rest of the group to get there.

 We got to tour the living quarters of the station (which that adults thought was interesting), but the real excitement was when we finally got to go out into the engine bay and see the trucks. Oh boy were the kids excited! One of the fire fighters "turned out" in his full gear so the kids could see it all. They got to check out each piece before it got put on, which was really fun.

 It was sure hot out in the engine bay, we were grateful to get to be the ones watching the whole "turn out" process, but not have to do it ourselves. That poor firefighter was sweating up a storm!

Doing a dance, or putting on suspenders...you decide. :)

 The kids were fascinated to watch as the firefighter put his gear on, but once he had the face mask on and the air regulator going they were not so sure about going anywhere near him. It's so good for them to have a chance to see that this is not someone to be scared of in case they are ever in a situation where they need to be rescued. Seeing how scared the kids were made me think this is something we ought to do every year so they get to see it often enough to remember.

 The kids all got fire hats and other trinkets to take home with them, which of course is always a plus!

 What an awesome way to spend a day! I highly recommend reaching out to your local fire station to see if you can do a tour like this!

Community Clean-Up

Over the last week or two Erik and I have been discussing the meaning of "community". We talked about how a community is a group of people who live near each other and help each other out. As we've gone about our daily lives I point out people/places in our community and we talk about how they help everyone else. For example, our tiny town has one little store/gas station, where one can go to buy basic grocery items, treats/sodas, gas, and few other miscellaneous things. Erik and I talked about how nice it is that we can go get an ice cream bar or some gas any time we want/need to. We talked about the library, the church, the park, the ranger station (remember, we live in a tiny town at the edge of a wilderness area, even the ranger station is an significant part of our community).

We also talked about how it's important for everyone to help out to keep our community nice. Even little kids like Erik can help pick up trash from the park or on the side of a quiet road. The plan is to go to the park with a bag for trash and see if we can fill it up. Unfortunately, between the flu, the weather, and the everyday business of life, we have yet to make it to the park.

I am hopeful that this coming week is finally going to work out for us to get this done, and when it does happen I'll be sure to share some pictures and details of how this went. For now, we're going to move on to the letter D here on the blog, since there's no point in waiting to post new material until we meet this one goal.

A Book About Me

I found this fun idea for a social studies activity for preschoolers here, and thought that making our own book fit nicely with our letter B theme. I didn't take the time the day we made this to pull up my computer to look up the exact page ideas used in the link, but I think I like ours better anyways. 

So let's gather our materials:

-sturdy paper (we used construction paper)

-stickers, yarn, misc. embellishments

-crayons

-glue

-small dollar store photo album (or you could just use a stapler and staple your pages together)

I started by cutting out blank pages from a variety of colors of paper, though plain white would have worked as well. I used a marker to write the words on each page (and make simple drawings on a few, you'll see what I mean), then showed him how to complete the details on each page to make them personal to him. 

I feel like we're lacking in fine-motor skills, so this activity was also meant as a way to encourage some practice in that area. I tried to make it so that for each page we used a different skill/technique to make the page itself. I wrote words with dotted-line letters for Erik to trace...

...I had him cut out shapes from different colors of paper...

 ...I let him glue items to the different pages...

...some pages he got to color with crayons or colored pencils, most he decorated with stickers.  Here are some of our pages:

Other page ideas:

A page for each member of the family

The child's birthday

The child's pet

Favorite book, food, movie, toy, etc

Where you live

Hair color

Once you've made all the pages you want, stick them in a small photo album or staple them together. Enjoy reading your creation together!

 In the end we wound up with a book all about one of his favorite subjects, that he made with his own hands. It's fun to watch him pull it out and flip through the pages. He loves trying to remember what all the words are on the pages. I love that he got a glimpse into where books come from, as well as the assurance that he's important. So important there's a whole book about nothing but him.