A Preschool Field Trip: F is for Fire Station

This Fall we started some preschool activities with Meilani at home. A friend turned us on to Brightly Beaming online and we started the Letter of the Week program. Meilani is only 3 but she's hungry for learning and reading so we thought it would be fun to jump into some non-structured, low-pressure education. Each week we champion one letter of the alphabet. We make it fun by creating pictures of the letter in glitter and thinking up words that start with that letter. Nana and Papa help us with ideas when they can. (Papa likes to come up with the advanced vocabulary words, while Nana is great at helping with the crafts.)

We take a weekly trip to the library and look for books on animals, countries and other things that start with the letter of the week. We also print out coloring sheets from the internet and practice writing the letter of the week. I've found that a lot of informal time talking about the week's letter and a little bit of formal teaching time goes a long way at this age.

We have also taken a few field trips to make a certain letter memorable. For the Letter F, I arranged a field trip to our local fire station and invited some of our other preschool-aged friends and mamas to join us.

The firemen crew were super cool and showed the kids all the tools they use to fight fires.

Meilani got to sit in the big fire truck with her friend Sam Brant. They thought they were big stuff up there.

One fireman showed off all the fire gear needed for a fire. The firemen time themselves and race to put all this heavy gear on. We were impressed.

Even us mamas enjoyed this "Letter F" field trip. (Ah, the things we'll do for free outings with our kiddos.)

The fire sirens woke up all the babies and scared some of the kids. But when we got in the car Meilani informed Mama that she was going to be a fire woman when she grows up.

We'll see...on to letter G.