Throughout the summer term, early years and foundation stage (EYFS) pupils at Colston’s Lower School in Bristol have been exploring the topic of ‘People Who Help Us’, finding out about the different roles the emergency services play.
What better way to bring this to life than to have visits from both the Mounted Police and Fire Service in school, allowing the children to hear first hand about the important things they do to keep people safe.
“We really encourage child led role-play in the classroom, with lots of dressing up and acting out different scenarios to help the children think about these different jobs,” explains Miss Steph Evans, Head of Pre-Prep. “But to have real life Police Constables and their horses visit us, plus a real-life Fireman Sam, really captivated the children’s imaginations.”
During both visits the children asked some brilliant questions. They got to find out how the horses, Trinity and Windsor, are trained, what things they get up to when protecting the community and about the special equipment the horses need to wear to protect them. With Firefighter Sam, they discovered what to do if they spot a fire and the reason why they need to practice the fire drill.
“Giving the children these valuable experiences really helped to cement their learning on the topic,” continued Miss Evans. “We thank the emergency services for giving their time to help us do this and we look forward to further visits, including a visit to the Police’s Mounted Section to see where the horses are trained, soon. The children can’t wait!”