Things You'll Need:
- Word searches
- Boxes
- Markers, crayons, tape and glue
- Books about workers and community helpers
-
Step 1
Start with coloring pictures. Younger children enjoy coloring pre-printed pages and these pages can highlight the contributions of a variety of workers or community helpers like firefighters, community volunteers and mail carriers.
-
Step 2
Introduce books into the classroom that highlight these community contributions. One such book, for example, "Officer Buckle and Gloria" by Peggy Rathmann humors children with the story of an officer who heads into schools for safety talks and gets upstaged by his silly dog. The children learn that even the job of a dog is important and that Officer Buckle was benefited by Gloria's efforts.
-
Step 3
Teach children to make things out of boxes that highlight community helpers and the efforts of American workers. Smaller boxes can be re-purposed into small versions of fire trucks or ambulances.
-
Step 4
Create word searches. Children love to do word searches and as they search for specific words, they learn about the words contained in the search. They repeat the words over and over. Some examples for word search terms might be bus driver, chef, plumber, nurse, maid, cook, chemist and cop.
-
Step 5
Have a parade. Each child can be given a role to play in the parade. Some roles might be firefighter, doctor, tailor, waitress and bus driver. Through their dress and behavior in the parade, children (both those participating and those observing) can learn about the importance of everyone's contribution to making a community a nice place.
