BURRILLVILLE – It’s Thanksgiving week and that means turkey dinners with family and friends. It also means there will be a lot of adults cooking and preparing Thanksgiving dinners on, and inside, hot stoves in homes and apartments.
As part of the popular kids home fire safety and burn prevention coloring campaign, “Safe Kitchen, Safe You,” series available on the Providence Fire Department website, this week’s NRI NOW Sunday cartoon is trying to remind adults and kids that stoves get hot and so does the food that is being cooked and prepared for your Thanksgiving dinner.
If you have children of your own, or kids are visiting for the holiday tradition, you may want to print out this burn prevention coloring cartoon and discuss with them why it’s not safe to play or stand near hot stoves – not only during the holidays, but also on any other day of the week as well. Kids should stay at least three feet away from hot stoves and preferably stay in another room, completely away from the kitchen. Stoves are hot to the touch when in use, and pots and pans can topple over and spill the food all over the stove top, counter top and floor. A small child standing or playing near that hot stove, if this should occur, could be scalded and severely burned.
I received an award and appreciation acknowledgment from the Boston Shriners Burn Center for my creative work in keeping kids safer from fires and burns across New England and nationwide at a firefighter’s conference hosted in the city of Boston a few years ago. These coloring cartoons are perfect learning vehicles for kids and families that utilize them in their homes to help keep everyone safer.
So, print them out, grab your favorite box of crayons or colored markers, and talk with your kids about their safety. Join in. You know you love to color too. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!
Jim Weicherding is a Burrillville resident, and the founder and creator of an award-winning traffic safety effort Seasons of Safety. Weicherding contributes kids’ coloring cartoons, which can be printed and used to help parents discuss safety issues with their children. He has a long list of police officers and firefighters in his family and has worked with law enforcement and firefighters in a creative public safety capacity for more than two decades. Jim was recently appointed to Children Across America as their events and creative director for their child safety programs initiatives and outreach kids safety campaigns nationwide.
