"Fire fighters are strong!
Fire fighters are fast!
Fire fighters put out the fires
and drive the big, red trucks!"
Yes, I am a song writer as long as I use the tune to "Clementine" and make some one word syllables stretch into two syllables!
Hopefully, the kids can sing this with you and add the hand motions that we are used in school today. Not only did we sing about fire fighters, we lived and breathed fire fighters today!
When the kids arrived today, they took turns riding on the bottom of Mr. Jimmy's cart (the fire truck), and then pulling the cart as the fireman. You should have seen their faces when I told them to sit on the cart!
Since fire fighters drive red trucks, two of the kids painted a box red that we will turn into a truck tomorrow. The other two kids painted another box blue to get ready to a police officer on Wednesday. They LOVE to paint!
Since fire fighters are strong and fast, the kids practiced jumping off the chair, lifting weights, running outside, and climbing. The kids each earned their own red, metallic spray bottle to take outside. Wearing red fire coats and fire hats, the kids ran outside to put out all of the fires! Of course, we had to sound like the truck siren as we ran from place to place. I had given them quite the talk about what they could spray and what would happen if they sprayed a friend before we went outside. I have the cutest picture of them standing in the pretend fire truck, heads peeking out of the top, spraying water into the air like real firemen with a hose. At the very end of the activity, Ms. Carol and I surprised them by letting them chase us with the spray bottles for one minute. I don't know who had more fu; we were all laughing so hard!
Instead of reading a book to the kids today, we all spread out on the floor and looked at books about fire fighters and police officers that had a lot of pictures. We took turns telling what we saw in the pictures tapping into prior knowledge, taking turns with the books, formulating complete sentences, answering questions, and learning new vocabulary. When we saw the pictures of the walkie-talkies, we held a conversation like we were fire fighters on the way to a fire. As Evan said, "Roger that!" Can you see why I get such a kick out of being with your kids?
For a math activity, we asked the question, "Would you like to be a fire fighter or police officer when you group up?", in order to graph our preferences. The kids asked each other, and then we walked the hallway and found other people to ask. The kids said, "Excuse me, will you answer a question?" and then asked our graphing question. They needed to look at the person and speak loudly enough for everyone to hear. When the person gave their answer, the kids would 'figure out' the first sound/letter of the person's name and write it on the graph. Our results indicated that more people wanted to be fire fighters!
Please see the weekly note in your child's take home folder to see what other math concept and literacy concept on which we are focusing this week.
