Fire fighters and fire trucks are fascinating for toddlers. What’s not to love? Everything about them is loud and red and exciting.

One of our favorite field trips (that we’ve repeated the most) is the Fire Station.

For weeks after we played fire fighter and read books about firefighters. As I listened to their play and conversations, it became apparent that my son especially was very interested in fire hoses and fire hydrants.

The mystery of where the water came from was high on his list of things to understand.

To help him investigate this further, we took a walk to look at fire hydrants.

Fire Hydrant Walk

Beforehand

Before we walked I talked to them about the point of our walk – we are going to take a closer look at fire hydrants.

Then they helped me pack some supplies:

• My camera and theirs. (They each have one of this style of camera, which work great for little hands)
• Their Journals and Colored Pencils

On the Walk

When we got to the field trip, we investigated every angle of the fire hydrant down the block.

Together we:

• Took pictures of the fire hydrant. A few of these were later printed and added to our environment.
• Talked about the different parts of the fire hydrant and where we thought the hose would hook up.
• Wondered where the water came from. This was added to our list of questions.
• Drawing in their journals wasn’t of interest to them this time, but some children might want to sit and draw a hydrant.

After the Walk:

Back at home our learning didn’t stop.

First, they helped me pick a couple of pictures to print. We added the pictures to their shelf in a couple more little frames. (I have about 5 cheap frames with the glass removed from Target that I use for their projects)

We compared the fire hydrants to one of the fire fighter books on our shelf. This helped us come up with more questions.

That’s the great thing about a walk like this, we can go check the fire hydrant again tomorrow if we need to. Easy. Free. Quick.

Want more toddler adventure ideas?

For more walk ideas and other adventures for toddlers, check out my book Little Walks Big Adventures!