The Fire Station

Today’s journal is going to be mostly about our excursion/field trip to the fire station……especially since it took three quarters of the day. We had an early snack because we had to start walking to the fire station at 9.30am. We are used to some changes in our schedule so we got ready and put on our jackets, smocks and outdoor shoes; and we were so excited for this adventure. We walked together with our Buds Class friends and sang along the way, looked at the autumn leaves as the wind blew them down from the trees and chatted. When we walk for a long time, some of us have to ask our friends and teachers to stop momentarily if our shoes come off. Today Michaela’s shoes were the ones that kept on coming off. We are always polite to our friends and teachers when they stop and say “thank you for stopping” when we are ready to walk on. When we arrived at the fire station we were able to see a few fire engines and many fire fighters. We also saw lots of equipment and we went inside an ambulance. You can see that there is a machine which is like a computer inside the ambulance, as well as some of the ambulance attendants’ uniforms.

The steps up and down were really high so one of the fire fighters helped us.

Then we went outside and we were glad to sit in the warm sunshine. Unfortunately the sunshine was so bright, we screwed up our eyes to see Hasegawa san while she was talking to us. She showed us some pictures of things to teach us about danger and how to take care of ourselves. We looked at a picture of someone leaning out of the window and we knew that this was dangerous. We don’t do this kind of thing because we know that you can fall; we looked at someone on a ‘jungle jim’ standing high up, and not holding on with their hands; the last picture was of someone playing with matches and fire. This was really dangerous. We told Hasegawa san that we do not do these things.

We were so impressed when our teachers showed us how to use a fire extinguisher. Hasegawa san said that they need to know how to use the equipment at our school in case there is a small fire. So they pulled the pin from the top, held the hose in place and squeezed and…………………whoosh……the water came shooting out. All the teachers at our school had a turn and successfully “put out their fires”. The next part of our visit was watching a fire fighter as he prepared to go out and fight a fire; this was just pretend. He shouted some words in Japanese and then he took off his boots, put on some special boots; he put on a very heavy, bulky jacket, buckled it tightly around the waist, put a huge helmet on his head and then he put a tank on his back. We were confused because usually people, who dive under the water, wear these tanks on their backs but the fire officer was not going diving in the ocean. Hasegawa san told us that the tank was filled with air and sometimes when you go into a fire, you need to wear a mask to help you breathe. The air in the tank helps you breathe. He also had some tools hanging from his jacket e. g. mask, a rope, a walkie talkie, and some other things.

We had a chance to put some real fire fighters’ jackets on and helmets. We could feel how heavy they were when we wore them. Phew! We think that the fire officers must be really strong to be able to fight a fire in these heavy clothes. In the afternoon, Jennifer told Shelley that she was not going to be a fire fighter because she doesn’t like to put a mask on. She said that she prefers to be a physicist when she is older.

You can see us dressed in the fire fighters gear……we looked just like real fire fighters. At the very end, we had a group photo and then we walked back to the park to play. We chatted all about the things that we enjoyed at the fire station and will continue chatting tomorrow morning, in our circle time.

When we got back to school, we read a book called “Alphabet Rescue”. It was all about the lower case letters who went to the rescue of their friends in the alphabet factory, because it was on fire. They managed to fight the fire even though they were smaller than the upper case letters. We enjoyed listening to the story because we too are small but can do many things that adults think we cannot do!

It was a wonderful day for all of us.

Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel.