fire Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Build a Shape Fire Pit STEM Challenge

October 11, 2022 By Deirdre

This Build a Shape Fire Pit STEM Challenge can be used in a maker’s space or on your kitchen table. The mats invite children to build a fire pit in the shape featured at the top of the mat.

There are so many different building materials your children can you to build the pit. While I would suggest you grab whatever you have available to you, here are some building material ideas.

KEVA Planks
Craft Sticks
Bristle Blocks
LEGO
Small Twigs
Building Blocks
Unsharpened Pencils

Getting the Build a Shape Fire Pit Set

First, you will need to download the set.

Build a Shape Fire Pit STEM Challenge Set Download

Second, if you don’t have Acrobat Reader you will need to download it. The algorithm page is an Acrobat Reader PDF file.

Third, you must go to your download file and open the page. You may be asked if you want the file to open right after downloading it. You won’t have to hunt for it in your download file if you are.

Building Background

There are children who have never experienced sitting by a fire or seen a real-life fire pit. Reading a book about roasting marshmallows while sitting by a fire pit would help them understand this activity.

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Exploring the Build a Shape Fire Pit Set

Once you have downloaded the set, you must decide how you want to share them with your children. At the same time, you could just add them to your maker’s space or put them out for your children to explore. I would follow the steps listed below.

First, identifying the shape of the mat would be helpful.

Second, talking about the parts of the shape would be wonderful. Whether you call where the sides connect vertices or corners, it would be great to count how many each shape has. Some of you may call the lines connecting the corners side or edges. Whatever you call them, it would be great to go over how many each has.

Third, finding objects that are the shape you are focusing on will help children visualize the shape they are going to build. It might be helpful to have one of the objects they find near the mat when they are building their fire pit.

Fourth, the building would finally happen. Children can decide how close or far away they want their build a shape fire pit to be away from the fire. They will need to think about whether the pit needs to fit on a mat or can be bigger than the mat.

More STEM Build-a-Shape Activities

Building Cards with a Magic Theme

Woodland Animal Pattern Block Building Mats

Fire Truck Games and Activities for Kids

February 4, 2016 By Deirdre

We have played and created fire truck games and activities for a long time at my house. I think it all started when we went to a story time at the library that had a fire safety theme. A fire truck was invited to come to the library and JDaniel loved climbing all over it. Since that library visit, we have checked out and explored books about fire trucks a lot. We have created crafts with fire trucks. We have played fire truck games using homemade math worksheets and one the floor.

Let me share with your come of our favorite fire truck games and activities! These are just some of what we have done. Please take a moment to search through the blog to find several more fire truck games, a snack, and a few more crafts.

Here my favorite fire truck games and activities:

Fire Truck Crafts

Meeow and the Big Box that the librarian shared so much I later shared it with JDaniel’s preschool class. Since that library visit, we have checked out and explored books about fire trucks a lot.

After reading through a book on painting techniques for kids, we made this fire truck with smeared flames behind it. We made the smears with a simple household item we already had in our kitchen.

Fire Truck Games

JDaniel used to suffer each spring and fall with terrible allergies. We had to spend a lot of time inside. This masking tape ladder is just one of several floor activities we did while avoiding pollen. JDaniel could move up the ladder as he read a sight word or counted on.

JDaniel has such a great time creating a snowstorm in a bag! I made him a fire truck bag with colored tissue in a zipper bag. The harder he blew in the bag the more the tissue flew. This fire truck game was great ways to work on breathing control.

While we were exploring the number one to twenty, I made this fire truck game for JDaniel. He loves rolling dice. I selected dice that had dots on them. He could count the dots and then cover the number with a button.

This is one of our newest fire truck games. It wasn’t created for JDaniel. The fire truck counting game is an activity I made for Pre-K Pages community helper series.

About the same time I made the fire truck game for Pre-K Pages I created this counting activity. While it is not a game per se, it came to be used to play math counting games.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are even more fire truck games and activities you can seek out on JDaniel4’s Mom. Here is one more to wet your appetite. I think you will love this place value fire truck game.

Fire Truck Craft With Flame Painting for Kids

October 7, 2014 By Deirdre

When you see the flames from a fire, you see several colors are smashed and swirled into each other. For this fire truck with flame painting craft, colors are smashed and swirled together too. The colors seem to be billowing and smearing together just as an actual flame would.

How to create the fire truck flame painting:

You start by gathering together the following materials:

Yellow paint
Red paint
Orange paint or an orange bingo marker
Paintbrush
Plastic wrap
White or black paper to paint on
Black, red, white and yellow construction paper for the truck

Painting the flames

Dab or drip paint onto the background construction paper. It is okay to layer the paint drips or puddles. Try to place them all over your paper.

Place a piece of plastic wrap over the paper that is the same size as the paper. Squish and slide the plastic wrap over the paint. You can straighten out the plastic wrap and squish and slide a second or a third time if you like. Kids are going to love the feeling of the plastic wrap sliding over the paint. It is the movement of the plastic wrap over the paper and paint that creates the flames illusion of movement.

Creating a Fire Truck

You could actually be finished with the craft at this point is you like. We decided to create a fire truck out of construction paper to place over a section of the painting to clarify what the themed of the painting was. Just in case people didn’t visualize flames when they looked at the painting.

A basic truck shape was cut of red construction paper. When I say basic truck shape, I mean that it has a cab and a trailer. Our cab has a rounded front section. If your children feel the front section needs to have a square front, that would be great too.

Two circles and triangle were cut out of black paper to make the front window and the tires for the truck. We went with two wheels. I can totally see fire trucks needing to have three or even four tires on one side. We only included one window, but more could be added on if kids want to have more.

A ladder was cut out of yellow construction paper and was placed diagonally on the back of the truck. When we have made other fire truck crafts, the ladder has been glued to the side of the truck. There really isn’t a right or wrong place to put the ladder.

Finally, a bottom trim piece was cut out of white construction paper to add a little bit of flair to the truck.

Then all the pieces were glued together to create a completed fire truck.

Adding the Fire Truck

Children can place the fire truck anywhere on the flame painting they would like to. Our truck ended up near the bottom of the page.

If you decide to try flame painting with your children, please stop back and let me know how to goes. Oh! You can find more fun crafts and activities on my Early Learning Pinterest board.

Fire Truck Activity for Kids

October 6, 2014 By Deirdre

Whether you are celebrating Fire Safety Month in October or putting together a community helper unit for your children this fire truck activity would fun to do. It is super easy to put together and super fun for kids to do.

The goal of the activity is to blow into a straw and get all the flames off the bottom a plastic bag decorated with a fire truck. If you can get the flames above the fire truck, that is even better. It takes a lot of breath control to get the flames ( tiny pieces of colored tissue) to rise off the bottom of the bag before you fill the bag with air.

We had to release the air collected in the bag a few times before my son was able to get almost all of the tissue pieces flying. The great thing about this fire truck activity is that you can repeat it over and over again.

How Did I Put This Fire Truck Activity Together?

Step One: Gather the Materials

Large plastic bag
An average sized straw ( A wide straw will allow tissue to fly into it and into your kids’ mouths. A narrow straw won’t generate enough air to get the tissue paper moving.)
Orange, red, and yellow tissue paper in small pieces
Red and black permanent markers
Fire truck coloring page

Step Two: Decorate the Fire Truck Bag

You will need to search your children’s coloring books or the internet for a coloring page picture of a fire truck. Then you will place the coloring page into the plastic bag. Next, you will use the permanent markers to trace the picture of the fire truck.

If you prefer to draw the truck for this fire truck activity freehand, you can. I am just not that talented when it comes to drawing fire trucks.

Step Three: Assembling the Activity

You will need to place a bunch of the colored tissue pieces in the fire truck bag. Next, you will place the straw in the bag. You will need to seal the top of the bag to the right and left of the straw by pressing down on the seal or zipping it shut.

Getting the Fire Truck Activity Going

Now it is time to start blowing the flames. We tried laying the fire truck bag on the table and blowing. It was much easier to hold the bag at the top or on its sides as air is being blown into it.

After posting this activity, I decided to see what it would look like with the fire truck colored in. I went back colored in the fire truck and retook some of the pictures.

Here is what it looks like colored in:

I even made a new opening picture for the colored in a truck.

Which do you like best?

Before or after doing this fire truck activity, you may want to sit down with your children and read a fire truck related children’s book. Here are a few of our favorite fire truck books.

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Curious George and the Firefighters – Curious George goes on a field trip to a firehouse and ends up helping the firefighters put out a fire.

The Fire Cat– This book is an easy reader. It tells the tale of a cat named Pickles who is adopted by a fire department. Pickles learns during this book to help the firefighters do their jobs.
Meeow and the Big Box>The librarian created an interactive box that illustrated how Meeow created her box step by step. It was such fun.

Do you have favorite fire truck themed children’s book?

Fire Ladder Learning Activities

October 6, 2013 By Deirdre

Today begins Fire Safety Week! To celebrate Fire Safety Week along with Fire Prevention Month I placed a fire truck ladder made of tape down a hall on the first floor of the house. When my husband asked what we were going to do with the ladder, I told him that JDaniel and I would brainstorm ways to use it.I hadn’t really thought about how we would use it initially. It was just time to take up the hallway numbers that had been going down the hallway for a couple of months. It did know that between JDaniel and I we would come up with a wide range of ideas.

Pretend Play

The first idea we came up with was to pretend to climb up the ladder. It looks easier than it is. You have to get down on all fours. Then you reach for the next rung and climb and reach and climb. Young knees may not feel the challenge of moving along a wood floor. Old mom knees felt the challenge!It was fun to pretend to be a fireman climbing the ladder. Climbing horizontally instead of vertically was new and unique.

Number Recognition

Calling out the numbers on a flashcards one at a time in order to move up a rung of the ladder was a simple way to review numbers. Early learners may want to work on the numbers 0-20. Older learners might want to work on larger two or maybe even three digit numbers. We worked on a variety of numbers.

Counting On

Agreeing on a number you want to start counting with on the bottom rung and then counting on until you reach the top of ladder is a second way we worked on number recognition.Some children like to start counting by counting from 1 on up to the number they need to start with. This is one of those learning activities that can help them wrap their brains around starting at the agreed number and going on. It helped us build a foundation for counting on.

Math Facts

Reviewing addition facts by starting on the bottom rung with first addend and then stepping up one rung at a time while adding the second addend is a lot of fun.Hint: You may find that you need to make more rungs or a longer ladder if you are working beyond early addition facts. We had fun adding movement to simple addition facts.

If you want to work on subtraction facts, you could move down the ladder instead of up or by taking steps backwards.

Sight Words

Just as you moved forward a rung by recognizing numbers, you could move up the ladder one rung at a time as you read sight words. Reviewing sight words is not always exciting. Putting on a fire hat and firemen’s raincoat and climbing rungs of a tape ladder can make reviewing them more fun.

Conclusion

The idea of doing fire ladder learning activities is to get children moving while learning. Some children enjoy getting up out of their seats to learn often. Others may be able to sit for longer periods of time, but need some variety of leaning activities offered to them. Either way fire ladder learning activities are fun and allow children to learn in a new way.

Read.Explore.Learn. – Fire Safety Themed Activites

October 4, 2013 By Deirdre

October is Fire Prevention Month. JDaniel loved to climb all over a fire truck when it came the library for Fire Prevention Month. Now that he is in school all day we can’t head over for story time and the fire truck’s visit. I decided to share with you and him fire themed learning activities and book designed to help children learn about fire safety.

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Most children love fire trucks, dalmatian dogs, and well everything that is fire safety related except maybe fire alarms. Sparky the Fire Dog is a book filled with cute and informative pictures about a dog how he keeps safe.This books opens great discussions about fire safety and what children need to do encase of a fire. It is written in such a way that it doesn’t scare kids or place ideas in their heads about fire that they don’t need there.

Fire Safety Themed Activities to do After Reading the Book

Fire Roll and Count 1-20

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Roll and Cover Fire Truck

One of the areas JDaniel is working on at school is number recognition. He can count almost to 100 without skipping numbers, but recognizing numbers can be a challenge. I decided to focus this number recognition game of the numbers 1-20. He is actually good at recognizing most of the numbers in that range. I thought introducing a new number game would be easier with number he knew most of the numbers. I can always go back and put in more challenging numbers on the board later.

Fire Truck Roll and Cover 1-20

The game is really easy to play. You simply roll the three die and then you count the dots displayed on the dice. Once you have the number, you place a red button on the number.

I like using buttons for game board pieces. They are great for fine motor skills and the game board came we used again and again because it is mark free.

Options:

You could use any of the following to mark the game board permanently if you like:

bingo marker
magic marker
pencil
crayon

You could also put the boards in a plastic sleeve and mark on the sleeve instead of the board itself.

You could used dice with number instead of dots to make the adding more challenging.

Fire Safety Lotus Chart

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Lotus Chart

JDaniel’s teacher mentioned that they will be using lotus charts a lot this year. I wasn’t familiar with them and how they were used when she mentioned them at Back to School night so, I googled them. A lotus chart contains a central box that displays the theme or concept of the chart. Around the center box words or pictures can be placed that illustrate the concept or theme.

I created a lotus chart that JDaniel and I could used to display fire safety words. The wonderful thing about doing a chart like this while exploring a book is that you can look back in the book for words that you want to use and how to spell them.

This is not one of my a fire safety themed activities focused on math, but I thought you would like to see it.

Fire Dog Number Count

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Spot Counting

This is more of a preschool center activity than one for kindergartners, but I love how cute it turned out. JDaniel didn’t have any trouble placing the correct number of button onto each dog to give it spots. I guess I could have made it harder by giving him bigger numbers and bigger dogs to put the buttons on.

Free Worksheets

I get comments all the time about wanting to have the handout or worksheet we have used to explore books. Up until now I have been sharing them. Not because I didn’t want to share them, but because I haven’t taken the time to create PDFs of them.

This week I have copies of the Fire Roll and Count game and the Fire Safety Lotus Charts. All you have to do is click on this Fire Themed Learning Activities and they are your.

What books are you exploring this week?