I found myself in a situation that any parent would dread. I rang the fire department hotline and NO ONE ANSWERED.

Fortunately our house was not on fire. We had a sizable python in our garden so it really didn’t qualify as an emergency –my dog who was on the menu probably disagrees. I thought to myself: My god, what IF my house had been on fire?

What would I have done? How would my kids have reacted? How much do I really remember about fire safety apart from the school drills where we slowly schlepped through school corridors, more relieved from a pop quiz reprieve than any message of safety.

The next morning I told myself I needed to prioritize Fire Safety but like many homeschooling mums, other pressing matters soon clogged my to-do list, like finalizing my goals for the school year 2013-2014 — shhhh please don’t remind me we are already nearly at the end of said year. And my good intentions fell by the wayside.

A couple of weeks later, I was half-heartedly preparing a Mexican map activity –read checking Facebook on the sly– when the most amazing thing happened, a gift from the universe really. I was contacted to consider reviewing the Sparky Schoolhouse videos and lesson plans, a fire safety curriculum FEMA is promoting. Someone somewhere is looking out for me!

I jumped to the site and started watching the Little Rosalie clip which is a song about what to do if you find yourself in a house on fire. My girls must have heard from the other room and they came running in. After asking a few questions, C my wee girl shouted “Again, again!” while P my 5.5 year old started pestering me to drop our map project and organize a fire drill like she saw in the video.

Check out Little Rosalie:

Since there was no appeasing my two little beasts we followed with hilarious What’s that Sound? This one made me want to break out my old roller skates with purple glitter laces and boogie to the tune.

There was no denying, Sparky Schoolhouse passed my kids’ test with flying colors! They passed my test too but then I am partial to pushing workbooks aside and dancing instead. Now I had a great excuse!

I promised them some more sessions and then kicked them out of our little office so I could check the lesson plans. I ended up choosing the 1-2-3-4 Order lesson plan. My girls love to cut and paste and this provided a fun way to reinforce the order of the safety steps.

You can check out the other lesson options here

As a homeschooler, it opened my eyes to the fact that despite my best intentions, I had some glaring gaps in my lesson plans, things that might usually be covered by school authorities. That said, I think the best part of this experience for me was not just finding an easy program my kids enjoyed, but the fact that I learned as much as they did.

And heaven-forbid I find myself in a case of fire, which is a very real reality given my forgetfulness, I now know I did everything I could to prepare and get my children to safety.