What does a firefighter do? Learning about community helpers in preschool is important so children understand they shouldn’t be afraid of a firefighter or a police officer. It helps them understand how the world works and how to be safe. Community Helpers Firefighters is Day 1 of the Mother Goose Time kit for November.
In the picture below, you can see what materials we have to work with today. A daily topic poster, family newsletters, Jack Be Nimble nursery rhyme poster, fire painting materials, name tags, and a fire station counting game. Lots of ideas and materials for the community helpers firefighters theme!
Community Helpers Firefighters
Each day I put up the daily topic poster so everyone can see what we’re going to learn about that day. I love that Mother Goose Time uses beautiful, quality REAL images on so many of their materials. We can see details in the photo below. Be sure to talk about the daily topic poster.
Questions to ask:
- What does this community helper do?
- What letter does firefighter start with?
- What is he wearing?
- What does rescue mean?
- Why do you think he has a light on his helmet?
Circle Time Activities
At circle time, we almost always sing the daily fingerplay/song. They are super quick to memorize and usually incorporate the basics like names, counting, colors, shapes. A Little Fire song goes to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” so I will sing that song with the kids and then transition to the new song. You could also pull out the Circle Time CD and sing along to it.
The Rhyme Time poster this month features the Jack Be Nimble nursery rhyme. I like that nursery rhymes are included in the Mother Goose Time curriculum. Nursery rhymes are little stories that help children remember a series of events. Children learn that some words sound alike – they rhyme! They also help children learn to read. Read more about nursery rhymes and download free nursery rhymes, fingerplays and song cards here. We talked about fire safety and how to be safe around a candle. We talked about the flame on a candle being really small but fire spreads and grows.
The Rhyme Time poster is also excellent for looking for letters. Each child gets a turn with the pointer. I ask them to find a certain letter. This helps us focus on letters and I can access how each one is progressing.
More Fire Safety Lessons
I use Scholastic My Big World magazines along with Mother Goose Time. They offer wonderful little lessons that coordinate with the seasons. They often include important health and safety or nature lessons. Along with the paper magazine subscription, you get access to the online resources, even an archive of past issues. So we looked at some of those resources too, because video and really make a theme or idea come alive. The materials shown below are from Scholastic and require a subscription to access. They are wonderful resources! Read more about them on Teach Preschool.
Just a short clip of a fire and firghters spraying the blaze. (from Scholastic – requires a subscription)
Another short clip of firefighters running to the truck with their gear, heading out a fire.
Fire Paintings
We loved this Fire Fork Painting activity! It’s process art that explores the colors of flames. Using the fork, the child presses the fork into the paint and then stmaps ir spreads the paint with the fork.
We used red, orange and yellow paint. Mixing the colors is fun!
After trying the fork, some moved on from using the fork and tried other techniques. This child took the paper plate of paint and pressed it onto her paper. That is fine too. 
Look at the results of our fire fork painting!
Fire Station Counting
The fire truck and dump truck manipulatives were included in this month’s kit.
Where do firefighters work?
Using the fire station cards, match up fire engines to the station with the matching number of trucks.
This is a fun counting and on-to-one-correspondence activity. It is versatile and works for younger or older children. The truck counters can simply be played with, sorted by color, or sorted by dump truck/fire engines. Or spread out the number cards and invite the child to draw a number card. Then drive that many fire engines to the station with the matching number.
To simply that, use only the number and fire station cards with numbers 1-3. 
To make the activity more challenging, have the child draw two number cards. Add them to get the total and then count out that many fire engines.
Anyway you do this fun activity, children are counting, matching and working on important math concepts!
