What Should We Do in an Emergency?

Thankfully, we live our daily lives emergency free. While we hope that we don't ever have to deal with a real disaster, we do our best to practice with the kids so if one ever does occur, we can all react in the safest possible way. Every month we practice a fire, earthquake, and lock down drill. We spend the day reviewing what to do, what might happen, and how to take care of ourselves.  It is very serious business but we try to have as much fun with it as possible and get the children engaged, where they are eager to learn and feel a sense of control/ownership over how to be safe.

Our friend, Firefighter Jo, comes to visit and helps review fire safety with us each month.  Everyone was eager to shake Firefighter Jo's hand after he thanked them for all their great help in our fire drill today.

Everyone took a turn and practiced what to do if their clothes got caught on fire...Bodhi showed us how to Stop, Drop, & Roll!

As we got ready to go outside, we got the "call" that "Jesse James" was out and about.  Jesse James is our teacher code word for needing a lock down. This is a drill that we unfortunately needed to use this past May, as a precaution, when an armed murder suspect was on the run in West Seattle . Luckily, during the scare in May, we only needed to "shelter-in-place", which we don't need to tell the kids about. The teachers just lock the doors, cover the windows, and we all stay inside. For a full lock down, what we have explained to the kids is that when the police call for "Jesse James", we need to be very quiet and not move around.  We told them that we are part of  a huge game of hide-and-seek and no matter what we hear, we need be quiet so no one knows we are here.  The character "Jesse James" may bang on the doors or shout but we need to stay silent and still until we hear that the game is over. 

One might think it would be impossible to have a group of preschoolers stay quiet and still for such a long time but when promised the reward of lollipops, they are remarkably capable.  The kids were quiet for a whole ten minutes today - and thought it was fun! :) 

 

  After all of our hard work, we went back to being carefree kids. Hopefully, we will never experience a fire, an earthquake, or a another lock down but we are always ready just in case we do.