Our homeschool was recently given the opportunity to review an e-book from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. After letting our eldest son look over the list, he decided on WannaBe™-When I Grow Up I Want to be a Firefighter. The WannaBe™ Series consists of books detailing various careers and our choice has proven to be a great introductory resource for Firefighter information.
This e-book has some awesome features including creative writing and storytelling prompts, review quiz, math, memory verses, and science. There vocabulary words throughout the book with the definitions located in the back. Various language arts activities were also included along with print and cursive copy pages. These additions are phenomenal because you don’t have to find additional activities for your child to reinforce the topic. I love that all the work is done for you!
Via this book we, yes my children and I, learned so much about the history of the profession from the bucket brigade to now, equipment needed for the job, financial compensation, and the importance of building codes. It also includes a day in the life view of the job, hiring requirements, and salaries for the various ranks. Our 3rd grader enjoyed creating the robotic arm and I used the provided vocabulary words for his spelling test this week. He also decided that he wants to read the video game designer e-book next. Our preschoolers enjoyed pretending to be building inspectors and searching for safety hazards in our home. This was my favorite game because it got them to clean up voluntarily.
During our Science time the robotic arm experiment and games went over very well. The instructions were easy to understand and we only had a minor misunderstanding when asked to mark the pattern provided dots on our model. This was easily fixed by using Figure 15 as our guide when joining the pieces. You can watch this fun project come together in my recent video.
Kenden has spent the week saying random “Mama (or Daddy), you know that firefighters. . .” statements. His favorite thing he learned about firefighters is that they should arrive at your quickly and they are trained for medical emergencies too. He told us “it makes me sad that firefighters have died in the line of duty. Even though their family won’t be able see their loved one anymore, they should be happy because they died saving somebody.” We decided that we will dedicate time weekly to pray for all those involved in dangerous jobs and comfort to those that have lost people they love while on duty.
All in all this is a great resource to introduce your students to the profession and has activities that will keep them engaged. There are even end of unit party ideas included in this book! I would only add a field trip to your local fire station to complete this unit. We live near a Firefighter museum and took a guided tour to complete our study.
Again, I hope you enjoyed my review of WannaBe™-When I Grow Up I Want to be a Firefighter via The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. This review opportunity was provided by and written for the Homeschool Review Crew. This crew is a lifesaver for homeschoolers! I love the unique applications each member provides and most reviews leave me saying “I would’ve never thought to use it like that.”
Make this week brilliant,
Ta’Neisha K.
Marriage, Motherhood, & Homeschool 
Great job, Ta’Neisha. I have a few of these in my files and we love unit studies. I guess it’s time I broke them out!
I agree because this made me search my files for others.
Fantastic review and I sure do like that your young man participated in the video, doing a nice job of speaking clearly and explaining. – Lori
Thank you