Fire Safety

After watching an episode of Caillou where his class went to the fire station the other night Selena insisted on knowing where our EXIT signs and smoke detectors were in our home. Papa and I decided it was time for a little lesson in fire safety.

I remembered that Jolantha at Homeschool Creations had done a Unit study on fire fighters, so I headed over to see what books she had read with her kids. We found a couple of them at the library.

Selena searched out our smoke detector, and we set it off so she could hear what it sounded like.

We explained while we do not have EXIT signs in our home we did have exits, the doors, and the windows. We then did some fire drills where we taught Selena to get on the floor and crawl to the different exits. We also instructed her that in her best interest she should not crawl by herself, but to get on the floor at the foot of her bed and wait for one of us or a firefighter to come and get her.

I practiced several times getting on the floor on my hands and knees, and looping my arm around her, we both crawled together to the various exits. We also talked about where to go after we get out of the house, and decided it would be in our best interest to go to Dan’s house, our next door neighbor’s house.

We had talked about doing an actual fire drill, but I feared that might be a little to scary for Selena at this age, so we decided to leave it at this amount of information for now. However, as she gets a little older we will have scheduled fire drills. She had more fun with this then I thought she might and as usual she did come up with some interesting questions. This will be a unit study that we will do in more depth down the road. Maybe even with a visit to our local fire department or an interview with one of the volunteer firefighters.