Fire Station Field Trip

(Cross-posted from the family blog)

As I think I mentioned, we've been having an Emergency Services unit for school, and after we toured the Police Station we thought we should tour the Fire Station too! I haven't been to a fire station tour since I had Cub Scouts. The tour was SO good! The firefighters seemed happy to have something to do and people to talk to. Even the chief came out and talked to us for a while. There was one man who was officially giving the tour, but the other three men on duty all gathered around and walked with us too, interjecting helpful comments. Eventually it turned into each child basically having his or her own personal guide and escort who could answer every little question. So great!

We went to the fire station close to us, a relatively new one. It was fun to imagine what it would be like to live there for several days a week with your team, cooking meals and learning new skills and watching movies together at night. Almost like Scout Camp or something, but better. :) We got to see the sleeping rooms and gym and kitchen and everything, as well as the fire engines, of course!

The little boys were very impressed with the "Jaws of Life", especially after the firefighters crushed a can with them

Trying on headsets in the fire engine

The girls were flattered too because the firemen were so nice to them, saying what good questions they asked, and praising their ballet/running fitness skills, and trying to convince them to join a fire crew in a few years. They told the girls, "Some of our best firefighters are women!" They were very persuasive. The job sounded pretty fun when they described it!

And Ziggy, of course, was just totally thrilled by the whole thing.

For days and days afterwards, all the little boys wanted to play was Fireman. They made fire trucks out of blocks and loaded them up with all kinds of equipment (and then had me come listen to their "tours").

Ziggy chopped his way into our house with his axe and sprayed everything with his hose (just for pretend, thank goodness, but only because the hose isn't hooked up to the water right now).

And he hung his firefighter gear in readiness next to his bike, with everything laid out for optimally quick entry (even his boots tucked into his pants just like the firemen had theirs!).

Here are the two little boys up on the hill, having raced there in great excitement when they heard sirens. "Maybe it's our firemen!" I confess we now check every ambulance and fire truck we see, hoping it's "our" firemen. They were so nice! It makes it fun to drive by the fire station now when we're out and about, just knowing what's inside and feeling almost like we have friends there.

Emergency Workers Unit Study and Activities

I thought we'd do a little unit on Policemen and Firemen for Ziggy's sake (he LOVES to pretend to be a policeman and fireman), and then it turned out there was a lot to learn about emergency workers and it wasn't such a little unit! We all enjoyed it. We had a section on Police, a section on Firefighters, and a section on EMTs and Paramedics.

Lots of video links for this unit, which will probably all be obsolete in a year or two, but oh well…

POLICE

Make a police badge

Make a traffic light (the boys liked this, for their toy cars)

Police Car Tour—pretty cool, but seeing the inside of a real police car on a field trip was even more cool!

We talked about all different kinds of police officers, so that included detectives and forensic officers too. Learning about fingerprinting, DNA, and Crime Scene Investigation was really interesting! Here's some information about fingerprints. And some ways to do your own. (Pictures of our attempts below.)

This identifying suspects activity was fun

Comfort dogs!

By far our favorite part of the police section was learning about K-9 units and how they train police dogs. This "K-9 Mounties" show about police dogs in Canada was the best and most in-depth. We watched 5 of 6 episodes (we knew we couldn't watch the one about dogs killed in the line of duty because it would make Ziggy too sad! He loves police dogs so much and wouldn't have been able to handle seeing them hurt.) Here's the first episode and you should be able to find the others from there. (The title of the show is just "K-9 Mounties.") We all love German Shepherds after watching these shows!

Here are some other police dog videos, here and here

These "Meet the Helpers" videos were annoying in some ways, but we still liked them (though the bigger kids enjoyed making fun of them a bit). Meet a police officer.

FIRE

Fire Truck tour (again, the real thing was better, but this is fun)

A day in the life of a firefighter documentary. The kids loved this one.

Police and Fire open house in some city

Fire Dept Open House (same event)

Same series as above—Meet a firefighter.

EMT

Meet a 911 Operator

This is a little paper model for an ambulance, police car, or fire truck you can build

Ambulance word search

Ambulance spot-the-difference

Ambulance Tour

Another Ambulance tour—this one was soooo funny. (In a bad way.) It was so bad it was good. Why did they make a talking ambulance? Why??

Handyman Hal was pretty funny too

(Here are the children improvising a stretcher to carry wounded Ziggy in)

Working on a detective/fingerprinting activity

Wildfires and Lightning

Here are a few resources for wildfires and lightning:

In the past, we have had fun making "lightning" with balloons and light bulbs (as described here and here)

These videos here and here and here show a phenomenon called a pyronado or a fire tornado. We'd never heard of these before, but they are amazing! They are formed by convection currents, just like real tornadoes, but these currents are made by the fire itself rather by storm clouds. Really cool!

A video about volcanic lightning

Information on ball lightning (video quality here isn't that great, but we just don't have that many instances caught on video, I guess!)

The picture above is our little demonstration of how a firebreak works. You fill a pan with little pieces of crumpled-up toilet paper. Make a ditch in the middle. Then spray the toilet paper with food-colored water. You can watch the "fire" (red water) spread slowly through the toilet paper around it, but where there is no paper for it to spread through (the trench), it stops. This is the same way a firebreak (a ditch or other area cleared of trees and brush) stops a fire---if there is no fuel for it, the fire cannot spread.