The following post was written by editor Kara Fleck.
October is National Fire Safety Month. This is the perfect time to start getting into the habit of a monthly home fire drill or to polish up your existing procedure, if your family already has one in place.
On a regular basis, the kids and I talk about fire safety, discussing what to do in a fire, and we have been doing an at-home fire drill every month. Still, it has been very eye-opening to me just how much they forget from month to month when we do our fire drills. That tells me how important it is that we keep this habit.
This month, we’re brushing up on fire safety and I’m using some resources from around the web to help us prepare.
Fire Drill
These will probably vary for each family, depending on the ages of your children, but just to give you some ideas and get the conversations started, here are my goals for our home fire drills:
- To review our two different escape routes
- To stress that we need to get out and then stay out!
- Learning why we need to crawl low under smoke, and then practicing our crawling
- Checking doors for heat before opening them
- Assigning a meeting place (our neighbor’s drive way across the street)
- Calling 9-1-1 after you are out of the house
- Setting off the smoke alarm so we can hear what it sounds like
- Checking the batteries in our smoke detectors
- Practicing our fire drill a few times – not just talking about it, but actually doing it
Fire Safety
Here are a few things I hope to incorporate in our fire safety talks:
- The concept of stop-drop-roll
- The special clothes that firefighters wear (which might seem scary to some children)
- Fire extinguishers and smoke detectors
- NEVER playing with matches or lighters
Fire Safety Resources for Kids
- Sparky the Fire Dog website
- McGruff “Be Fire Safe” game
- Fire Safety Coloring Pages
- Kindergarten Fire Safety Theme Week from Confessions of a Homeschooler
Fire safety certainly falls under the category of lessons that I hope my children never have to actually put into practice.
My hope is that discussing fire safety and initiating regular at-home fire drills will prepare my family, should such an emergency ever occur. Be safe, friends!
This post originally appeared in October 2010 and has been updated for October 2011.
Do you do monthly home fire drills with your kids? What else should I include in our fire safety talks?
About Kara
Thanks for this, Kara! This is definitely something we need to talk about around here. Right now we have no plan and have certainly have never had a fire drill. Terrible, I know!
Aimee @ Simple Bites´s latest post: Chocolate Beet Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
Honestly, I can’t believe we haven’t been having drills on a regular basis before this either (we’ve got a number of fire fighters in the family) But, hey, now is a chance for both of our households to start, right?
Here’s to staying safe and being prepared!
Kara @Simple Kids´s latest post: Fire Safety Month and AtHome Fire Drills
Wonderful! Thank you so much for posting this. I do need to get off my duff and really get a plan in place AND get my kids familiar with it. I so appreciate the clear guide to doing that.
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Thanks, Rebecca!
Kara @Simple Kids´s latest post: Fire Safety Month and AtHome Fire Drills
We do this, ever since the house behind us burnt down in four minutes flat – I kid you not, there is no time to grab photographs or anything … kids in arms and GO!!! Seriously by the time I figured how close the fire was I wouldn’t have had time to go back and fetch the little kids, if it had been my house. It was that close. If you even suspect a whiff of a fire then get the people out – there is no stuff important enough. We also do “What to do if there is an unexpected guest in the house!!!” but that might be because we live in Cape Town and there are ummm how do I say “serious crime issues”!!! Emergency training is a must, thanks for the reminder!!!
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I can’t wait to visit the fire station with my 3.5 year old son!
My 4 year old just had a visit from the local fire department at his school. But this article was a great reminder to me that we should discuss fire safety at home and what to do if something were to happen here. So thanks for this!
We did this nearly every fall since my oldest was 3 and the thing that amazed me was how often the younger kids would have absolutely no memory of it later. It’s important to do all of this, but also important to keep doing it — especially for younger kids. The first few times, I sort of taught it and considered it taught, but it really gets dumped out as short term memory unless it becomes a truly regular family discussion.
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Great post! We need to do this at home. The kids talk about it at school and sometimes I forget that we need to do it at home as well.
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Thanks for all the great tips! I just came across a fun fire safety book called No Dragons for Tea: Fire Safety for Kids (and Dragons) by Jean E Pendziwol and Martine Gourbault. Check it out!
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Great tips. I celebrated fire safety week the first week of October on my blog, and also posted a number of fire safety tips. I learned more with each post I did. The one that helped me most was learning how to use a fire extinguisher.
We have one in our home, but until I wrote the post I really didn’t know how to use it. Well, might as well not have it if you don’t know what to do with it, right?
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Good post Kara. This is a very helpful tip for all of us. Thank you so much for sharing. It is much better to be prepared than to be sorry later. I have also learned a very convenient way in asking for help during emergency situations and it’s a new company I found on the internet and it sounds pretty useful. If you want to check it out go to http://safekidzone.com/“
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What a good idea to teach children about fire safety!
we don’t do drills yet. my son is two; i’m not sure if it will scare him. how soon is good to start?
Similar question here! My son is 3 and a half, and every time I bring up fire safety, or what-to-do-if-you-can’t-find-Mommy-in-the-store, etc, it ends with him in tears. I swear I try to be as calm and gentle as possible. Any tips??
I love the fire safety coloring pages. Thanks!
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