October is National Fire Prevention Month, with Fire Prevention Week happening October 8-14. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has fantastic resources to help educate children on preventing fires. In addition to fire prevention week materials, they are also launching a brand new safety app for kids. In this blog post, I’ll share all of the resources that you can use for educating children how to prevent fires.
Understanding Fire Danger
The single most practical fire safety strategy for families is having parents and children agree on a place outside the house where they would meet in case of a fire. For this and other helpful information use the how-to template available in the 2017 Sparky Schoolhouse Fire Prevention resources.
Here you can find a selection of videos for preschool through grade five. Just pick the grade level and you’ve got a video you can use. These videos include many cross-disciplinary resources including a history of the Great Chicago Fire and a downloadable ebook (in all formats) to reinforce safety messages, reading, science, math, and social studies.
In Sparky's Schoolhouse, you'll find grade-level videos and activities for core subject areas.
Take some time to incorporate a fire safety message in your lesson plans for next week!
5 Ideas for Teaching Fire Prevention and Safety This Week
- Teach students about a home fire escape plan and holding a drill
- Teach children home safety tips including smoke detectors, quick release security bars that everyone can open
- Consider asking your local fire department to do a presentation on security bars, home escape, and fire prevention and safety
- Send a flyer home. The NFPA has many flyers and handouts (and even a cool quiz) that your students could distribute throughout neighborhoods as a service project. (See the teacher resources page for these.)
- Reinforce the message. Use videos in a variety of subjects – history, math, language arts – to emphasize the fire prevention and safety theme of this week. (They are on the 2017 fire prevention resources page.)
Helpful Links and Resources
Teacher Fire Prevention Resources
- SparkySchoolhouse.org homepage is NFPA’s teacher portal for fire safety education. Start here to get resources and plan your week’s activities.
- Sparky Schoolhouse 2017 Fire prevention resources:
- Get your fire prevention teacher guide.
- Download a how-to template for students and families to help them create a home fire escape plan. (This is the type of homework we should assign.)
- They have targeted materials for high-risk populations.
Student Fire Prevention Resources
- Sparky.org is a student-friendly site for children’s education.
- Sparky’s Fun House game is a web-based activity to help students learn about fire safety. This could be a great use of their in-class technology time during the week of October 8-14.
- Sparky the Fire Dog® was hanging out at a carnival funhouse when he heard the beep, beep, beep of a fire alarm! Help him find a safe way out so he can get to the outside meeting place.
- Once you help Sparky get safely outside, you'll unlock three fun minigames including a math and a spelling game.
- Standards-aligned math problems included in the Bot Blaster minigame get more difficult as children progress through the levels, giving kids quick exposure to addition facts ideal for K-2 students.
- On the Word Coaster mini-game, students will be exposed to common spelling words given in grades K-2, with an increasing challenge level as students spell words correctly.
The National Fire Prevention Association has given all of us teachers the resources we need for every subject. We can teach fire safety and fire prevention. Let’s do this.
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