This post was contributed by Kate of Kitchen Floor Crafts.
I’m really excited Krissy gave me a chance to share a post today here at B-Inspired Mama! You can usually find me over at Kitchen Floor Crafts. We’re a small family with a small house; but a lot of fun, love, and projects. I have two kiddos Big Brother (age 4) and Little Brother (age 18 months.) I’m a part time elementary school teacher so I spend my afternoons at home with my two guys creating fun learning, crafting, cooking, and play experiences.
Thank Firefighters with Homemade Cards!
October is National Fire Prevention Month, which means it’s a great time to learn about how to prevent fires, how to stay safe if a fire happens, and what firefighters do to help us. But it’s also a great time to remember to say thank you to a firefighter for their brave and caring efforts. And of course, one of the best ways for kids to say “thank you” is with a homemade card.
In our small, rural community there are very few professional fire departments. Instead, most towns depend on the efforts of volunteer firefighters. We decided we would make a card for our volunteer fire department, as well as a few homemade cards for a couple of local firefighters we knew personally. Big Brother has been eagerly interested in all things firefighter and fire truck related for a while now, so when I mentioned the project he got really excited.
Books to Read About Firefighters:
Before creating our homemade cards, we first read a few firefighter books. Our favorite was Firefighters A to Z by Chris Demarest which not only helps you understand what a day might be like for a firefighter but also includes information about their tools. Other books we enjoyed included DK Readers: Jobs People Do — A Day in a Life of a Firefighter, and Tonka: If I Could Drive A Fire Truck.
After reading we started to work on our homemade cards. We wanted the cards to look like fire so we decided to comb paint. Our materials included white card stock, washable poster paint, and combs. We used red, orange, and yellow paint.
At first we just put a few dabs of all three colors onto the middle of the paper and the boys experimented with using the combs to swirl the paint around. Comb painting is fun because it mixes the colors and creates interesting lines and textures while painting.
Through our experiments Big Brother and I discovered that to really make it look like fire it worked better to make a pattern of red and yellow dots in a line near one of the edge of the paper and to pull a comb through it towards the other edge several times until it was mixed and textured. We repeated this method several times to create multiple papers.
We waited for the papers to dry and then cut our painting parts out of the paper so they looked like a patch of fire. We glued the pieces we’d cut out onto black and navy cardstock to create the homemade cards. I used a permanent marker on the outside to write “Thank You” and we used a silver permanent marker on the inside to write a message to the firefighters.
Big Brother enjoyed delivering the personal cards to our friends. We also stopped by our local fire station and slipped the card into the mailbox for the volunteers to find on their next meeting day.
We had a great surprise tie in at the very end of our week when we travelled a little south to attend an evening fire truck parade. Both volunteer and professional firetrucks came to create a parade of over 100 firetrucks. What a perfect way to end a week thinking about fire fighters!
Have you ever made a thank you gift or homemade cards for service people? Have your kids ever visited your local firefighters?
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