{"id":23142,"date":"2013-10-07T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/?p=23142"},"modified":"2013-10-02T13:57:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T17:57:51","slug":"family-fire-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/family-fire-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Fire Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By contributing writer\u00a0<a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/WvA0b8\" target=\"_blank\">Colleen<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I hadn&#8217;t really thought much about family fire safety until the night two years ago when my neighbor beat on my door shouting for me to call the fire department.<\/p>\n<p>His house was on fire.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-23266\" title=\"Family Fire Safety | The Happy Housewife\" alt=\"Family Fire Safety | The Happy Housewife\" src=\"\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/10\/Family-Fire-Safety.jpg\" width=\"554\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/10\/Family-Fire-Safety.jpg 616w, https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/10\/Family-Fire-Safety-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/10\/Family-Fire-Safety-600x404.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 554px) 100vw, 554px\" \/>photo credit: <a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/s4xton\/3030450667\/\">Aaron Landry<\/a> via <a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/photopin.com\">photopin<\/a> <a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/2.0\/\">cc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>7 boys, including his son, sat with wide eyes in my family room, the Lego model they were building for their upcoming robotics competition was completely forgotten. They weren\u2019t confident engineers any more, they were terrified little boys.<\/p>\n<p>While it didn\u2019t happen exactly at that moment, I did realize that my kids needed to know what to do in case of a fire <i>because<\/i> <i>of<\/i> that moment.<\/p>\n<p>Do your kids know what to do in case of a fire? Here are some easy ways to teach them what to do.<\/p>\n<h3>Create a Plan<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Have your kids help you create a map of your home with all of the exit points highlighted in specific colors.<\/li>\n<li>Get roll out ladders for upper windows. Keep blankets or towels handy and teach your kids to put them over their mouths as they escape from a fire to keep from breathing too much smoke.<\/li>\n<li>Designate a meeting place in the neighborhood. This could be a trusted friend\u2019s house, a stop sign, a lamppost, or whatever. It just needs to be easily accessible for even your littlest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Practice Your Escape<\/h3>\n<p>Once a month (or more often in the beginning) have a family fire drill. This can be planned or unplanned so your kids experience it both ways. Set off your fire alarm so they get used to the sound. The more you practice and they hear it, the less they\u2019ll be frightened and freeze if the alarm goes off for real.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-23149\" title=\"Family Fire Safety (Fire Truck) | The Happy Housewife\" alt=\"Family Fire Safety (Fire Truck) | The Happy Housewife\" src=\"\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/09\/Demystify-fire-fighting.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/09\/Demystify-fire-fighting.jpg 600w, https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/files\/2013\/09\/Demystify-fire-fighting-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/>photo credit: <a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/benmcleod\/534219376\/\">Ben McLeod<\/a> via <a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/photopin.com\">photopin<\/a> <a target = \"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/2.0\/\">cc<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Demystify It<\/h3>\n<p>Read about fire safety, especially with your little ones. I love the video <a title=\"Amazon affiliate link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sesame-Street-Elmo-Visits-Firehouse\/dp\/B00006IKBP\/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1380735322&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=elmo+visits+the+firehouse&amp;tag=thehaphou-20\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Elmo Visits the Firehouse<\/em><\/a>. In this fabulous DVD, Elmo and his friend go out to eat. When the fire alarm goes off due to a grease fire in the kitchen, Elmo is scared and doesn&#8217;t want to go back. He is even frightened of the fire fighters in their gear.<\/p>\n<p>Fire fighters are scary looking when they have all of their gear on, especially if they\u2019re heading toward you in a smoke-filled room. Watch videos like this with your kids, then visit your local fire station so they can meet real fire fighters and see all of their equipment up close.<\/p>\n<p>Some fire stations have a \u201csmoke house,\u201d a trailer that is filled with smoke to mimic a burning building. My six year old recently crawled through one of these, and she was a little unsteady when she got out. It was a disorientating experience, but now she knows what it would be like in a fire and has the understanding of why it\u2019s important to get low beneath the smoke and get out right away.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, keep fire safety an on-going conversation with your kids and around the dinner table. A house fire is devastating when there are no injuries. They\u2019re unthinkable when someone, especially a child, is unprepared.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/author\/colleen\/\">More Posts from Colleen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By contributing writer\u00a0Colleen I hadn&#8217;t really thought much about family fire safety until the night two years ago when my neighbor beat on my door shouting for me to call the fire department. His house was on fire. photo credit: Aaron Landry via photopin cc 7 boys, including his son, sat with wide eyes in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-real-life-homeschool","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23142"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23267,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142\/revisions\/23267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}