I was recently sent a fantastic book which gently introduces this concept to young children in a not-at-all scary way.
Meet Toby the Teddy...
Toby the Teddy takes us on a journey through the adventures of his daily life, and several things go wrong along the way. He drops his ice cream, it starts to rain, he grazes his knee... and he wonders "Is this an emergency?". No, but he figures out what he needs to do to fix the problem. (I was impressed that Miss M said she had already read this book at child care before).
As I was reading the book, I wondered where it was going to lead, and was interested to see how the situations gradually increased in their level of emergency. The authors have thought really carefully about real life situations that children are most likely to find themselves in (e.g. asthma, allergic reactions).
After we read this book together, we spent some time teaching Miss M our address and wrote it on the special magnet that came with the book. This lead to a discussion about other emergency services and people who are in our community to help us.
Naturally young children will be eager to 'role play' these special people and Twinkl has some great resource to get them started (e.g. Fire station role play).
Kids will love pretending to be fire fighters when they're enjoying water play outside, you could set up a hospital with their teddies and play doctors and nurses, or pretend to be police officers when they are playing with toy cars.
These Songs and rhymes I found look great too...
In the mean time, stay safe and pray that your child doesn't ever have to make that call - but consider using this book as a starting point to introduce them to this tricky concept. Ideal for schools, kindies, child care centres or home.
Lauren xx
We recently had this discussion with our four year old after he touched on it with his kindy class. He was interested in knowing ALL of the situations where he would need to call 000 for us, so I will definitely have to check this book out!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Lauren - they certainly are interested in this topic aren't they? I definitely recommend the book :)
DeleteA lovely review! Perfect book to help our young children know what an emergency is. A must read and a must have in any house with young children. Perfect for schools, and teachers too!
ReplyDeleteSo true! Thanks for visiting :)
DeleteI've been thinking this recently and how to start teaching Miss L to make an emergency call. It's a bit hard on mobiles when there's different home screens and pass code patterns and whatever. My Samsung has an emergency call button on the lock screen so it's probably time to point that out and she knows our address.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right about mobile phones Beth - I should have included that in my post...
DeleteThis is so important. I really need to help my children understand more about emergencies and what to do in case of an emergency. Looks like a great book!
ReplyDeleteSuch an important lesson! Great post! Anna @ Kids Play Space
ReplyDeleteWow what a Great Information about World Day its exceptionally pleasant educational post. a debt of gratitude is in order for the post. Top 5 Best Train Toys for Kids in India
ReplyDeletePretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I'll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon. Big thanks for the useful info. Pop Cultures game
ReplyDelete