COMMUNITY HELPERS: PK-4

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Ana's Week 

​Community heroes week was a blast for both girls this week, particularly when unexpected events allowed us some face to face interactions with heroes in our community. I set up the week so that we would focus on one hero a day, so we ended up covering police officers, firefighters, mailmen, EMT drivers, and doctors. In hindsight, I would focus on doctors and EMT drivers on the same day so that we could cover garbage men, but having two light school days was useful when we were swamped with activities outside of the home and had a surprise re-visit from the grandparents. At the end of the week, we had an unfortunate small car accident (don’t worry! Everyone was fine!) that gave us face to face interaction with a kind police officer. Though the event was not something we wanted to deal with, Aria was able to see a police officer at work and was gushing over his kindness for the rest of the day.

The best activities of the week involved learning truly important things for Aria’s safety. We practiced dialing “911” on mommy’s phone just in case mommy is ever unable to get the phone in an emergency and we practiced escaping the house in case of a fire (over and over and over). Aria loved showing daddy our fire escape plan when he got home, so I know that activity really stuck with her and she will know what to do if a fire happens… though we will need to practice again every few months.

Aria also had the opportunity to practice singing her number in case she is separated from mom and dad around strangers, and we talked about safe strangers and unsafe strangers. I can’t speak highly enough about learning your phone number and address to the “Frere Jacques” tune. My husband said that hearing Aria sing my number to the tune is how he finally learned it. Aria also loved building her own town with envelopes, especially since we named the town “Aria’s Town.” As she drove her mail truck around town, we sang our address to the “Frere Jacques” tune over and over again. I think that learning our address is bound to take far longer than learning my number has taken but that it will be worth the reward in the end.
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I’m glad that we could have a fun week together talking about things that can be associated with scary situations, such as fire, sickness, and attacks. We kept things light, as I didn’t want Aria to be afraid she might be kidnapped or face a house fire at any moment, but I believe that Aria took me seriously when it came to being safe from strangers and fire. We are so lucky to have community heroes that can save us in case of an emergency, bring us important letters and keep us in contact with loved ones, or who serve us in times of sickness and hurt. In honor of the events of 9/11, I am so grateful we get a chance to honor those who sacrifice and dedicate their lives to save and serve us. 

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Jessica's Week

We are very fortunate to live in a society where opportunity abounds and big dreams of success can be realized with hard work. But in the strive for success and teaching our children "you can be anything you want to be" I sometimes feel like I have lost sight of showing appreciation for the blue collar jobs that keep our community strong. This week I wanted to change my own attitude of seeing certain jobs as more "menial" than others and teach Taegan how fortunate we are to have a community with someone willing to deliver our mail, pick up garbage, teach at our school, grow our food, help us buy things, and on and on. Sure we also touched on doctors, firefighters... Mostly because there's a lot more fun resources for teaching these, but I felt like T was already familiar with them from other body or safety lessons we've done and the recognition they regularly get at events so we kept it as brief as possible. 
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The most successful part of this week was once again the simplest. I made a point to bring Taegan along on various errands (a trip to the bank /post office etc) and as we visited each location we stopped to watch what the workers there were doing. We talked about how society would be much different if no one was willing to serve our food at a restaurant or pick up our garbage. We made thank you cards for our mail lady and local librarian. If I ask Taegan what she wants to be when she grows up, I always get the "ballerina dancer" answer and as a parent I'm doing my best to believe in her and do everything possible to help her achieve her goals (even at this very young age) but I hope to also instill the value of the everyday jobs. I want her to know there's never any question of how proud I am of her if she grows up to be a mother or accountant. She is just as valuable to God and to her community doing a blue collar job as she would be if her career is "the prettiest, most famous ballerina ever." 😋 Going along with this theme we also did a bible lesson about the 12 disciples. They were regular old community members as fishermen, tax collectors, a doctor etc who followed Jesus and became famous for how they lived and served not what their job title was. We read "12 dudes who did" and made an egg carton of disciples who she was able to interact and play with in our Melissa and Doug town playset. We even talked about how we can be modern day disciples in our community teaching others about Jesus at school and thanking our servers, cashiers etc. Taegan loved the role play aspect and playset printables we found for librarians, postal workers. She got a little discouraged delivering alphabet mail to our pretend "customers" around the driveway on her bike but it was a great lesson on how workers can get hot, tired, bored etc and still have to complete their tasks. I wish we would have had a little more time to play through other little known jobs such as cosmetologist, veterinarians, military, auto shop, pastors, etc but hopefully I can remember to stop as we visit these places and spend a moment talking about how important they are to our community. Perhaps I can even find little ways to recognize the value of those who work there. The week was certainly a lesson in gratitude for me and I know if continue to apply what I've learned my kids will eventually pick up on it too!