Fire Safety Heroes: Teaching Kids About Firefighters

As part of our Kindergarten curriculum, we have a section on community helpers. However, there wasn’t a lot of guidance given as to how to teach this. I decided to put together my own lesson plan on it! And honestly, I wish I could put together all of the lesson plans that we do rather than using a curriculum that already has lesson plans outlined. I have found that when I can add more movement and games to my own lesson plans, my kids fight me much less on doing school each day. This was a fun way to learn about a career in firefighting.

For the first part of the lesson, I hid these flames around the house with some scotch tape. The kids would find the flames and bring them to me. We would discuss what was written on the back of the flame. Sometimes it would be something simple, like what firefighters do day-to-day. Other times it would be more in depth, such as what our personal fire escape plan is, practicing our address, or discussing emergency calls on the phone. Some of those topics could be their own lesson themselves, but it is even a good idea to discuss it briefly so children can have a general picture of what fire safety means for them.

Next step in the lesson is pretend play. You can go as elaborate with this as you want. And if your kids are anything like mine, they could run with it all on their own. Sometimes it is best to save this kind of thing for last, because once you have finished the lesson, the kids can keep their game going on their own. If your kids aren’t into pretend play, that is okay too! You can just walk through the scenarios with them verbally. But for little kids, actually going through the motions of where they could be if a fire broke out in their home is going to stick with them more clearly in their minds.

And finally, there is a quick workbook page your child can do. After learning about what firefighters do, they should be able to correctly circle what kinds of things they think a firefighter would need to keep in their fire truck. Once again, you could also just play this game verbally. You could even make it active by having them stand up if they think it goes in the truck and sit if they don’t think a firefighter would need it. And you could add some humor in here too, suggesting silly stuff!

Be on the lookout for future career day lesson plans! A doctor theme is next on the schedule for us!