Emergency Situations with kids. What if...

I’ve been thinking a lot about emergency situations and “what if’s” when it comes to my kids.  What if something happened to me when I was home alone with the kids, would Rowen know what to do?  What if we had a fire, would the kids (or me for that matter) know what to do?

About a week ago, I was cooking dinner and trying to tend to the kids after work as usual.   Things got a little chaotic and I completely forgot I had something in the oven and burned it, which then triggered the smoke detectors in our house. 

While I was not happy that I burned our dinner, I WAS thankful for the situation because it made me realize that Rowen had NO CLUE what the alarm from the smoke detectors meant.  This of course then got me thinking - how can we explain fire safety and other emergency preparedness information to a three year old?  I know the kids' school will also teach some of this, but I think they need to hear the information from us, too.

We haven’t done it yet, but we plan to talk with Rowen about all of the above soon.  In the meantime I’ve been gathering (what I hope will be) some helpful discussion tools via Pinterest!

{Books}: We have this book and have been reading it!  It addresses"stop, drop and roll" and helps explain what firefighters do!

{Fire Safety Videos}: Rowen loves her ipad and watching videos, so these will be great!

{Crafts}:  An easy way to keep her busy and to help visualize the "911".

 Songs:  Rowen sings 24/7 so these will be a hit!

{Info Sheet}:  While I know she can't yet read, this is something that I think every family should have hanging on their refrigerator!