Community helpers are one of my favorite themes in the primary classroom. This topic is an easy one that students can relate to and get really excited about. It’s also an important one! Our kids need to be able to recognize the people in their community who are helping to serve and protect them. They need to learn to trust people like police officers, firefighters, doctors, and nurses. There are so many ways to teach students about community helpers in your classroom. Come along to see some of our favorites!
Exploring the Community Helpers Theme
So what does a community helpers theme consist of anyway? Inside this theme, you and your students will explore helpers in the community such as doctors, nurses, police officers, and more! The idea behind this unit is to educate students on the roles of many different people in any typical community and how they help.
Many classrooms cover safety helpers as well as other members of the community too such as grocers, postal workers, farmers, and bakers. In my experience, the more the merrier when it comes to this theme! Students have a wide variety of interests, so discussing many different roles in the community is a great way to appeal to the masses.
Community helpers is an easy unit to have fun with. It can easily come alive in your classroom! There are tons of different interactive and engaging activities you can choose from to bring the topic to life. I like to use a variety of different activities and mix it up so we can explore community helpers in a few different ways.
1. Begin with Community Helpers Books
One of my favorite ways to introduce a new topic or unit is with a great story. Kids love stories and read alouds so it is a great way to engage them in the topic from the start. At my school, our reading curriculum includes some great stories for community helpers. However, you don’t have to use a specific reading curriculum to begin with a book!
Here are a few of my favorite books to read during our community helper unit:
- Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip
- Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do
- The Berenstein Bears Jobs Around Town
- Pete the Cat Firefighter Pete
- Whose Hands Are These?
I incorporate these books and many others into my lessons during our community helpers unit. Often, I will read a story to kick off our lessons for the day and pause for a little group discussion after reading. This is a great way to get your students thinking about what you’ve read and how it ties into your lessons.
Using Books in Your Lessons
For example, one of the first books I always read is Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip. This book is a classroom favorite and my kids love listening in as the students in the book travel all over town to learn about different jobs in the community. I love this story so much that I created an interactive notebook resource to go with it. Inside, students will practice a variety of skills including:
- beginning sounds
- rhyming words
- sequencing
- classify and categorize
- shapes
- plot
- making list
- community helpers
- compare and contrast
I love reading the book aloud and then working through the interactive notebook activities as a class. We do some of them together as a whole group, while other activities are perfect for small groups and independent practice. The versatility of this activity makes it a great starting point for our community helpers lessons!
2. Have Fun With Community Helper Dress Up
After our introduction, it’s fun to use some dramatic play opportunities to explore the community roles we have learned about. As an elementary teacher, I love to incorporate dress-up opportunities in my class and this theme is the perfect one to do so! It is always so much fun to see the kiddos’ imaginations come to life. There are a couple of ways to do this in the classroom, so you’ll just have to decide what you think is best for your group.
One option is to have in-class dress-up opportunities. You can have a community helpers dramatic play center that includes costumes and props. This is a great way for students to connect with their social studies learning at a different level. You will love watching as your students start bringing to life all they learn about community helpers.
Another option is to have a special community helper dress-up day. For this option, students will have the opportunity to come to school dressed up as a community helper. This always sparks some great discussion as to why each student chose the community helper that they did. I love to have students tell the class who they dressed up as and why. It’s a sneaky little way to get in some of those oral speaking standards.
If you choose this option don’t forget to plan in advance and give parents a couple weeks of notice. I also like to have a few backup outfits on hand for kids to borrow in case they forgot or were unable to put together a costume for this option!
3. Engage with Digital Activities
We all know that students love using technology. And . . . technology is their future. So we owe it to our students to get them to use technology in different ways. For this reason, I like to incorporate digital activities into my lessons. Not only are they great for increasing engagement, but they are also a great way to teach technology skills without ever going to the computer lab.
Two of my favorite digital activities include Boom Cards and Google Slides activities. Both are highly interactive and allow students to practice important skills.
Boom cards are all the rage and for good reason. They provide an interactive way for kids to master a skill while having fun doing it. Boom cards also offer instant feedback because they are self-correcting. They are paperless, easy to prep, and can be accessed on a website or an app! What’s not to love about them?
Similar to Boom Cards, Google Slides are another option for completing digital activities. Students will be able to drag and drop different items as they interact with the questions. Both Boom Cards and Google Slides provide students with a game-like feel that they love. And . . . as busy teachers we love that these no-prep activities are easy to incorporate into the classroom. If you are not at a 1:1 campus you can easily add these activities into your center rotations. Both Boom Cards and Google Slides can be used on a computer or tablet and work great with a partner or solo!
Digital Community Helpers Activities
Knowing all of this, I had to create some fun digital activities, especially for community helpers! These digital sorting and categorizing activities are the perfect addition to your community helper unit. You and your kiddos will love it! Both the Boom Card version and the Google Slides version include 20 cards, each with a different community helper and their building. The list of helpers includes doctors, dentists, veterinarians, plumbers, and more!
Students will choose the 5 tools that go with the helper and place them in the building. It’s interactive learning at its best! These activities are perfect for center time, independent learning, distance learning, and even homework. You can find these digital community helper activities on TPT. Just choose the version that matches the platform you want to use below!
Digital Community Helpers Lapbook
These community helpers games aren’t the only digital activity I’ve got for my classroom, friends! I also created a fun, interactive Digital Lapbook all about community helpers too! If you love digital activities and are looking for one more option to add to the mix, I know you’ll love this one.
The idea behind this activity is that students will explore different community helpers and complete prompts and questions over 35 different digital slides. It’s compiled in a Google Slides format, making it perfect to use on the interactive whiteboard with your whole group or assign on devices to individual students. There are tons of different activities included to help explore community roles and check in on students’ understanding. Some of the things included are:
- Community Helper KWL Chart
- Community Helper Match
- Compare Community Helpers
- Sort Community Helper Tools
- Community Helper Videos
- Community Helper Writing
- Labeling Fire Fighter, Mail Carrier, Doctor, Dentist, Police, and more!
This resource was designed to truly be an all-in-one lesson on community helpers. Students will watch videos about different jobs in the community and then work on answering the questions on each slide. While this works well for independent work, my favorite way to use this activity is actually as a whole-group lesson. Each day, I project the digital lapbook up on the screen and we will watch one of the videos together. Then, we will work through a few of the activities on the slides. This is a fantastic digital teaching tool that helps provide students with tons of knowledge on community helpers!
After our group lesson, I will often reuse this activity as a partner assignment. I simply assign students a blank presentation and allow them to drag and drop to answer the questions as a team. This is also a great option for center time, homework, and of course – distance learning!
4. Plan a Community Helpers Field Trip
There’s nothing that helps students make real-world connections with their learning than field trips. There are so many great community places the class can visit. In the past, I’ve taken my students to the fire station, the police station, a local farm, and the grocery store/bakery. Not all at one time though!
I’m sure with some asking, you can find a community helper who would love to host a field trip for your students. Make sure to start planning early! Many of these places will need a month or more of notice. You might also need that extra time to put in a bus request or get the field trip approved by your administration.
Oh and be sure to recruit parent helpers if you can for this one! This is a given any time you take a field trip in the primary classroom, but I find that with so much to explore in these destinations, you’ll definitely want some extra eyes on your students!
5. Host a Community Helpers Day
If you can’t go to a community helper, why not bring one or more community helpers to you? Host a Community Helper Day and invite local community helpers to come and talk to your class. I love to make a morning of it and invite multiple community helpers from our area to come and talk to the class.
We set up different stations and divide up all the kindergarten students (by class or smaller groups) to rotate through all the community helpers. Some of the guests like to bring their equipment and vehicles too! The students LOVE meeting real-life community helpers and hearing about their jobs.
You can start by asking parents who are community helpers to be part of the day. Then contact your local fire and police departments, your utility companies, and maybe even some local politicians. A call to your favorite doctor, dentist, and veterinarian is a great option too. With a variety of community helpers represented your students will have a day of learning ahead!
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Save These Ideas for Community Helpers
Teaching about community helpers is one of my favorite units of the year and now you can see why! I hope you have found some ideas that you can use in your classroom too. Save these community helpers ideas on your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back when you are ready to teach about community helpers.
