Safety Town

There is a nearby city (there are no towns where we live, just one massive collections of cities) where the fire department has built a minature size town complete with roads, traffic lights and signals.  The purpose of this little town is to teach children through hands on learning safety rules and the importance of them.  There is a house where kids can learn fire safety, how to escape a burning house safely, and what house looks like after a fire.  They also do tornado safety as well as traffic safety.  The kids are able to drive around the town, where they have traffic lights to follow as well as traffic directions.  This minature town is usually opened to schools for field trips, but on Fridays during the summer they have family night where families can come and explore together.  There happened to be a Friday where Grant would be able to break away from work early and so we capitalized on the good fortune.  The kids really enjoyed driving around the town.  They have motorized jeeps for the younger kids and bikes for those who are too big for the jeep.  Madeline surprised us all by wanting to drive around with a bunch of other kids.  Madeline drove that jeep like a champ while cranky Spencer sat in the passenger side.  To Spencer's credit he fell asleep on the way over and so he was still waking up from his nap.  While we waited for our turn to drive around the town we went to the different stores where we learned safety rules relating to stranger danger, swimming, riding a bike, and what 911 is used for.  After spending the afternoon learning about safety we headed for a nearby mall and ate dinner.  I am so glad that we went, the kids were able to learn a lot through hands on learning, and we were able to have fun as a family.  A win win situation for all!