Fun with Fire Trucks in Ginny’s room!

October is Fire Safety Awareness Month. This is a perfect activity for learning the parts of the firetruck!


A few weeks ago when I was home my sweet daughter in law sent me a text asking what she needed to make the fire truck cookies from the Fire Fighters Unit. I was quick to send back, “Want me to come and do it with them?” Of course she said yes! So I went to the grocery store and got all the things we would need for the next day! That night, I made individual baggies for each child with the pieces they would need to make the fire truck. (Ginny teaches prek and we were all going to be doing this at the same time.)

So when I got there, I had all the pieces to make the fire truck brace map. Pieces for the map are (here).  I told her kiddos that I found these pieces laying on the floor in my living room and was wondering if they could help me figure out what it was suppose to be. After gluing the parts of the fire truck on the map, I showed them the labels. We talked about each part of the fire truck and what letter we thought it would start with. Then, we matched up the labels with the correct part.
Then, I read them a book about fire trucks. On each page the part of the fire truck was written in bold text. I talked to them about how the author had written the word really dark, bold, so that we would know that it was the most important word on the page. They helped me find the other bold words in the book.

Then we got busy making the fire trucks. We used popsicle sticks to spread the frosting and the kiddos put on each of the food items as we talked about what part of the fire truck it could be.


After eating the fire trucks, we got back together on the carpet and looked at our fire truck brace map again. I introduced the recording sheet (here) and demonstrated how they could draw the various parts of the fire truck. I told them that sometimes writers used letters to help the person reading their paper know more about what they were drawing. We talked about what letters we  could use and I demonstrated.

Then, it was their turn. I love how they all look different!
Thinking back to how children convey meaning…through illustrations….this was hanging on the wall in Ginny’s room. Do you see the “T” on the drawing? That is the bed. Below the T he drew the things that we under his bed and above the T he drew the things that we on his bed. . I just loved it!
While I was there, Ginny had some first grade visitors. They were learning about scarecrows and poetry and came to perform their poems for the pre k kids. What a great way to practice prosody! They were so flippin cute!