This week our homeschool group visited a fire safety event at a local fire station.

Fireman DJ is ready to rush to your rescue at a moment’s notice.

In the meantime, he played with a room full of fire trucks. He also practiced sliding down a fire station pole, but (ahem) he needed some help so no chance for a photo.

After a bit of play, Firefighter Melanie did a smelly presentation of how smoke behaves in a house, pointing out the importance of keeping doors closed to keep out damaging smoke.

Then the children watched a short video on what to do in case of a fire. The main points were: 1. Get low and go! (Crawl on the floor to the door) 2. Check the door for heat. (If hot, do not open the door and go to your second exit) 3. Get out of the house to your Safe Meeting Spot 4. Do not go back inside.

The next day, DJ worked with the World Map again. I learned an important lesson as to why every presentation in the Montessori albums starts with telling the child what the material is called. DJ had been sitting on my lap and pointed to the other end of the room saying he wanted to do “that”. I had no idea what he meant and said he either needed to use words to tell me what “that” was or to point to it. He finally walked across the room and pointed to the map at which point he said, “Oh, right! It’s Africa!” Heh. Well, close. It’s the World Map that includes Africa. My fault for not teaching him its name.

Later, he visited some old favorites. Have you noticed he hasn’t been using his work mat lately? He’s fallen out of love with it and refuses to get it out. I don’t want to stop him from wanting to work altogether but I’m at a loss how to reinforce the need for a mat.

Then he pulled out the Geometric Solids and did what he always does first – put the round objects onto their bases. Then he started playing with the triangular pyramid. So I asked him if he could find another pyramid. At first he brought out the cone, which made me wonder if that could logically be called a “circular based pyramid”? Finally, he brought out the square based pyramid and you can see him matching them in the photo.

More cylinder work. For this I did insist on his work mat because there are SO many pieces. But unfortunately, someone knocked at the door shortly after this photo which distracted him and he ran off in the yard leaving me to pick up the pieces. Ugh. He will learn to put things away, right?

Finally, DJ had a play day with a neighbor girl. She is almost 4 and goes to preschool, but not Montessori, so she was fascinated with his cylinder blocks. It was interesting to see that it wasn’t too easy for her even though she’s almost a year older. It really highlighted for me just how much DJ has learned from his time working with them.

In the photo, they’ve moved to his bedroom and are playing with his tool box and putting “nails” (golf tees) into “wood” (styrofoam). This is also something that DJ does A LOT (hence the foam pieces all over his room). I have no idea what he was laughing at but I love how cute this photo is.