Field Trip

Some homeschooling women in the area put together a stellar field trip experience. It started with an emergency/fire experience trailer.

A person showed you how to work a fire extinguisher.

Then you went inside the trailer where things burst into flames and the children had to put the fires out with an extinguisher. My children loved this.

Then an earthquake was simulated. Very loud. My children loved this as well.

Of course, lots of good information was given--it wasn't all about the special effects.

After the trailer we explored the fire station--including the truck used for forest/prairie fires.

And an ambulance. The kids thought it was pretty exciting that the firemen all had bedrooms to sleep in plus a kitchen and tv room.

Great information; fun field trip. Kudos to the women who put all the effort in to put it together.

Along with the touring type activities, the women also gathered Red Cross information, gave each child an emergency bag with things like hard candy, a toothbrush, and a bandaid (plus numerous other things). They gave the parents a fingerprint/identification kit for each child.

So, as an extension activity, for FHE I focused on our family's preparedness level. It is pretty sad. I pulled out the emergency backpacks (we have one for each child--nothing for the adults) and found that most of the spare clothes were now too small (it has been awhile since I put them together), the granola bars had mysteriously disappeared, and Eli had nothing in his backpack at all.

We went through each backpack and wrote down a list of what was needed for each child and updated what clothing we could with the supplies I had on hand. Then we talked about our family's preparedness goals. We decided that smoke detectors somewhere in the house would be a good idea. We also decided that we needed an emergency plan in case there was an emergency and we weren't all together. My hubby wrote everything down and we made a plan to meet our emergency preparedness goals.

Then we filled out the fingerprint/information card for each child and I put them in a safe place.

Overall, it was a good extension of what the children learned on their field trip and it was a necessary revisiting of the idea of being prepared. We try, of course. We have an emergency backpack with food, water, and first aid essentials in both vehicles. We have the kids' backpacks--which are a little better than nothing.

So although we've done a little, it is always a good idea to make a few easy goals to improve.

Thanks again for the people who made the field trip possible. It was awesome.