Safety and Water…Do Mix!

Teaching Safety Concepts: Hot

Dangers are everywhere and we have questions all the time, how do we teach our child about danger? This can be an abstract concept and there are dangers everywhere, but what we don’t always realize, that when talking about things that are dangerous, our world is in pictures! Think about on a fire extinguisher, any medicines, or on our coffee cups, we see pictures that warn us. This activity focuses on the idea of hot and cold.

How many times have you burned yourself on something? If you are like me, all the time! I know it is hot and I still somehow burn my hand. So, the question has come to us wondering how to introduce this concept to keep our friends safe. From the blog, Extremely Good Parenting with Kara Carrero, she has a great way to associate colors with temperature.

Have two buckets of water. One you can put ice in to keep cold, while the other should have warm water. I would make sure it is not too hot to burn your child’s hands, but warm. Add food coloring to each, blue for cold and red for hot. Talk about each concept. Say things like “brrrr this blue water is cold!” You can even use the sign for cold. Next when you play with the red bowl talk about hot.  Say things like “Oh, this red water is hot, be careful!” Kids love to play in the water and then can begin to make the red and blue associations. This will help later, when they start turning on faucets to know which one will be hot or cold.

An add on activity you can do with this is having red cards that have “hot” on them and blue cards that have “cold” and go through the house labeling items that could be hot or cold. Ideas for hot include: stove top, oven, dryer and grill. Ideas for cold include  fridge, freezer and cooler. You can create rules around these for now by saying, “The red card says, hot. I don’t touch it.”

If you are really concerned with your child touching something hot, you can try adding a small stop sign to your red cards. This is just another visual reminder that we need to stop and think. I would talk about that also, saying “Look, it’s a stop sign. We need to stop and think. If we want something, we need to ask mom or dad for help.” Using the signs for stop, think and help is a great way to give another visual cue to your child. Not only could you use this for hot and cold, but also for other dangers in your house.

Activity idea can be found at this link we’ve also saved it to our Pinterest page.

Blog submitted by Jenn Parsons, GiGi’s Playhouse Quad Cities Program Manager & Speech Pathologist