For the letter F, as part of our A-Z of Fine Motor Series, we couldn’t resist basing an activity around the role of a firefighter. In our “Put The Fire Out” activity, my son had to use his fine motor skills to work two types of water pistols in order to extinguish the fires.
Setting up our Put The Fire Out activity was straightforward. I used the base of a large 33 litre Really Useful Box in order to contain the water and the contents of our pretend fire.
Next, I needed some houses. As I have zero artistic ability and unable to draw an accurate picture of a house I cheated and used printed images from Twinkl. I laminated the pictures so they could be used again and sellotaped them to the plastic box.
To create pretend fire I squirted shaving foam over the houses. I then added a mixture of yellow, orange and red poster paint across the shaving foam.
Using a wood spatula I patted the shaving foam until the colours combined and created a fire like effect.
We took the storage box outside and tilted it against the wall. I placed a bowl of water next to our burning houses along with three small water pistols and a large pump action water gun.
I demonstrated how my son could be a firefighter and put the fire out using his water pistols.
During the activity my son had no idea that he was actually working on his finger isolation and strengthening his finger muscles.
To him, he was being a firefighter putting out fires and saving houses.
It took my son some time to get used to the pump action water gun. He preferred the precision of the smaller water pistols.
I had thought that the shaving foam would quickly disperse with a little bit of water squirted onto it.
However, it took some effort to get the shaving foam and paint mixture to fall to the bottom of the box.
After working his fine motor skills for some time, he eventually managed to put out all of the fires. Our little firefighter had certainly give his finger muscles a workout.
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