Triple Zero Kid's Challenge

I came across a great website recently, thanks to our neighbourhood watch newsletter.

The emergency services across Australia have created a Triple Zero Website for children. It's a set of cartoon scenarios which require either police, fire, or ambulance help. It helps kids (kindy and primary schoolers) know what to do in an emergency.

I'm what I call a 'catastrophiser'. I tend to imagine the worst. So I have wondered what would happen if there was an emergency in the house - would the kids know what to do? I even used to wonder if you could ring 000 just to have a practice (but knew we better not).

This website shows kids what counts as an emergency, when to ring 000 and what to say. Even I found it helpful and when I had reason to call 000 for the fire department recently, I knew how the phone conversation would go and I was ready for it.

I think it has sunk in for the kids too, as after we played on the website, they created an emergency game outside, calling 000, asking for fire, or police or ambulance and explaining the situation to each other over the 'phone'.

That was time well spent online.

Uno

This was one of our Christmas presents for the kids this year - and it has been an absolute winner.

I have very fond memories of playing this in the evenings with my family on holidays in the snowfields in the US when we were children. I was keen to create some of the same memories (perhaps without the snowfields at this stage!).

All three kids love it. Mr  6.75-years loves it and picked it up straight away.  Miss 4.75-years got the hang of it within a few days. And even Miss 2.5 can follow the colours and say 'uno' when she has one card left. It's fun for parents (unlike Snap or Go-Fish) and you can have 2 or up to many players, so its truly a fun family game!

If you have kids the same age as mine - give it a try, you just might have fun too!