Weekly Activities: Carrying on from last weeks fire making and pancakes, we did some further learning about fire safety this week as it's such an interesting and important activity. After reiterating how to behave around a fire we set about chopping logs using a hatchet and the children all had a try using a flint and steel to make sparks. The children then helped to collect different sized twigs and sticks to use as kindling and we used twizlers (natural wood wool) and cotton wool to help get the fire started. At Blackheath we fashioned a tripod stand over the fire to suspend a kettle which we used to boil water for some fruit teas (the children tried peppermint and strawberry/raspberry tea).
Instead of our usual fruit and vegetables at snack time we ate various different foods cooked over the fire. Some days we had popcorn - we put some corn kernels into two sieves bound together so we could watch them expand and puff up into popcorn. On other days we made vegetable soup which the children prepared by chopping carrots and parsnips into discs along with red lentils and water and cooked it over the fire. We also had corn on the cob which the children prepared by chopping it into smaller segments and then wrapping it in foil to cook in the hot fire embers.
Other activities this week included stencil mud paintings, charcoal pictures, making shelters and dens, making a wooden spit rod and also building play camp fires.
Home Activity: Fire safety at home.
Please take the opportunity to talk about fire safety in and around the home with your child in an appropriate, child friendly way. You could discuss what to do if there was a fire at home, what function smoke and carbon monoxide alarms have (press the test button so children can hear what it sounds like) and how to behave around either an open fireplace or a wood burning stove. Following on from this theme you can talk about not touching hot things e.g. stoves, ovens, radiators, kettles etc and you could even organise an exciting trip to your local fire station!