Over the past few months the Preschool 1 children have been engaging in activities that have involved learning about firefighting and fire stations. There have been activities that have allowed them to dress up in real firefighter turnout gear (donated by Erin’s dad). The children who have tried on the real gear have been overheard saying that the coats and helmet “are too heavy” and “too big” for them. They have used the real coats and helmets, along with the dress up items when playing in the pretend fire station, driving the trucks around and putting out the different fires set up around the classroom. Spray bottles have been turned into fire hoses in order to put out fires in the burning building, along with raising the ladders on the fire trucks to spray water from their hoses. The children have also participated in some creative activities that have allowed them to use their fine motor skills. They have painted flames around a silhouette of a fire fighter, used fire trucks as paint brushes and drew their own fire trucks. For this last activity everyone was able to use a toy ladder and tanker truck as a reference and then draw their interpretation of what they saw. Gross motor skills were used when the children participated in a bean bag toss game, that simulated putting out a fire by knocking over cups with flames on them. Hand-eye coordination was needed for this activity is order for the bean bag to make it to the direction of the flames. It took a couple of tries, but once the children were able to figure out what they needed to do to be successful, cups went flying. Sensory activities were also involved in the children’s learning. Images of each child were turned into fire fighters and they were placed into the tuff tray among, fire trucks and fire coloured Easter grass. Many pretend scenarios were created during this time, involving the children’s being the heroes, rescuing whomever was in trouble.
Fire fighter puzzles were made for the children to work on their problem-solving skills. They were able to think about the process of putting the pieces into their correct place and showed a sense of pride as they completed each one successfully, showing off their work to the educator. One of the favourite activities that the children engaged in was creating their own fire explosions, using baking soda and vinegar that was coloured orange. As the children dropped the vinegar solution onto their tray of baking soda all five of their senses were used. They could see that there was a chemical reaction saying, “Look at the fire” or “Look, I made a volcano”. They were able to touch the mixture with their fingers and mix it around on their tray and some children were overheard saying, “I hear it making popping sounds”. There were even children that were brave enough to taste the vinegar solution off of their finger.
Throughout all of these activities the children have been able to demonstrate a sense of belonging by involving all of their peers. They have shown that they are capable of sharing and taking turns with the materials. Our exploration of this topic is not over yet and we can’t wait to see what other fun we can get into.
