Police Hurrying! Helping! Saving!

The touch and feel pool was busy this morning as Bristol and Ryan joined the rest of the kiddos manipulating all sorts of colorful geometric shapes.  They enjoyed making new shapes as they put several different shapes together.  We learned the names and colors of the different shapes...diamond, octagon, square, and triangle...to name a few.  

This week we continue our theme surrounding community helpers...specifically policemen and firemen.  It was a big day at the Speech Garden today because a REAL policeman came to visit us!  Before we met him in the church parking lot, we introduced the concept of "policemen" with our book of the day Police Hurrying! Helping! Saving! by Patricia Hubell.  This book talks about all of the things that policemen and women do to keep us safe...solving crimes by looking at fingerprints, chasing burglars, directing traffic, helping children cross the street safely, and using and training German Shepherds for searching and finding.  It also talks about all of the different modes of transportation that are used by policemen...motorcycles, bikes, cars, horses, and boats.  As always, we used picture cues as we read the book to aid in comprehension.  We also used these pictures to teach all the different parts of the policeman's uniform...badge, handcuffs, flashlight, and hat.

After we read the book, we were very ready to meet the policeman in person! The kids were so excited as we walked out to the parking lot because Officer Wade had the flashing lights of his cruiser moving and all the doors open.  We all sat on the sidewalk as he taught us about all the things that police do to keep us safe.  They direct traffic, help children cross the street safely, and go after bad guys.  We also learned that policemen are our friends, and we can always go to them if we are lost.  He talked to us about all the different parts of his uniform...his hat, badge, and handcuffs; and showed us his special walkie talkie that even had other policemen speaking to him in a special secret code!  Officer Wade took all the children over to his cruiser and pointed out the word P-O-L-I-C-E written on it in big letters.  He explained that every police car has a special number and that the blue lights and siren tell people to slow down and get out of the way so that policemen can get to others who may need help or who may not be following the rules!  Bristol and Ryan each took a turn sitting in the cruiser.  As a grand finale to his visit, Officer Wade left everyone a special gold police badge sticker, coloring books, and crayons; and he blared the siren one last time.  Ryan said that "it hurt his ears!"  What a great visit!  A big THANK YOU to Officer Wade! 

     

After we thanked Officer Wade and said goodbye, it was time for us to head to the playground.  Bristol and Ryan used sidewalk chalk to make beautiful designs on the rubber floor outside.  We wrote their names, and drew many different types of lines and scribbles.  All the other children had fun joining in too!

With very runny noses from the chilly weather, we came inside to get to work on our arts and crafts.  We reviewed our book of the day about policemen to remind us of all that we learned with Officer Wade.  For art, we made our own traffic lights, because police make sure we obey the laws and follow traffic lights appropriately!  To make the traffic lights, we glued red, yellow, and green circles to long brown rectangles.  We learned that red means "stop," yellow means "wait," and green means "go" and paired them with the signs for those words that we have been targeting since the beginning of the school year.  It was also a great way to target color and shape vocabulary, and to continue to learn that a little glue on our hands definitely will not hurt us!  Officer Bristol Barrows and Officer Ryan Maltz also had time to make their own police badges by gluing all the parts together!

As you can see, it was such a fun and busy day learning about policemen!  Looking forward to seeing sweet Bristol and Ryan on Thursday to learn all about firemen!