Wildfire smoke can mean more indoor days for families across B.C.’s Southern Interior. Play can do more than fill the time—it is one of the main ways young children explore, understand and make sense of the world around them.
In play-based early learning, the environment matters. Offering a rich, varied and responsive assortment of materials—especially materials connected to children’s real experiences—gives them meaningful ways to explore ideas, ask questions and build understanding through their own play.
These are invitations, not prescribed activities. Simply make interesting materials available and let your child decide what—and how—they want to play. If helicopters, animals, firefighters or emergency plans naturally become part of their play, adults can stay nearby, curious and reassuring without taking over the story.
1. Create a Community of Helpers
Put out blocks, vehicles, toy people and animals. Include firefighters, pilots, nurses, veterinarians, police officers or other community helpers if you have them.
Then let your child decide what happens.
A fire truck might fight a pretend fire—or spend the afternoon delivering lunch to stuffed animals. Both are valuable play.
If wildfire themes emerge, you might simply say:
“There are lots of people helping.”
2. Move the Cattle
For children growing up in the Interior, ranches and livestock may already be part of their understanding of wildfire season.
Provide toy cattle, horses, fencing, trucks and blocks. Children might build pastures, load animals into trailers or move them somewhere safe.
You can follow their lead with simple prompts:
“Where do you think the farmer wants the cows to go?”
“Should we count them?”
The focus is care, planning and problem-solving—not danger.
3. Pack a Little Grab-and-Go Bag
Put out a small backpack with everyday items such as socks, a toothbrush, water bottle, book, pyjamas and a stuffed animal.
Children may enjoy deciding what belongs inside.
You can casually explain:
“Our family keeps some things ready because grown-ups like to have a plan.”
Avoid asking children which possessions they would “save.” The reassuring message is simply that adults prepare ahead of time.
4. Make a Family Plan With Pictures
Emergency planning can be made understandable without making it frightening.
Create a simple visual sequence together:
Our family → our car → our safe place → our pets → our special bag
Let your child add drawings, photographs or stickers.
Keep their role simple:
“If we ever need to go somewhere, your job is to stay with your grown-up. The grown-ups know what to do.”
Children should never feel responsible for managing an emergency.
5. Helicopter Water-Bucket Play
Many Southern Interior children recognize the distinctive sound of wildfire helicopters.
If your child is interested, provide a toy helicopter, string and a small container. A blue scarf, bowl or piece of paper can become a lake.
Children can lower the bucket, collect pretend water and fly wherever their story takes them.
Later, if you hear a real helicopter overhead, you might say:
“Remember your helicopter? That could be one of the helpers.”
There is no need to introduce a pretend fire unless the child chooses to.
6. Open an Animal Care Centre
Put out stuffed animals, blankets, bowls, cardboard boxes and perhaps a toy medical kit.
Children might create beds, prepare food, examine animals or build shelters.
If wildfire becomes part of the story, animals might stay somewhere else for a while and later return home.
A simple message is enough:
“People help animals during emergencies too.”
7. Build a Clean-Air House
When smoke keeps children indoors, try turning the idea into play.
Use blocks, boxes or blankets to create a “clean-air house.” Children can close pretend windows, turn on an imaginary air purifier and make the space comfortable with books, pillows or stuffed animals.
You can explain:
“When it’s smoky outside, we keep the smoke outside and make the air inside cleaner for our lungs.”
This can help shift the feeling from “We’re stuck inside” to “We’re making a comfortable indoor space today.”
8. Be a Meteorologist
Children often see adults checking phones and maps during wildfire season.
Provide a clipboard, map, toy microphone or simple weather board:
- Clear - Smokey -Windy
- Indoor day - Outside day
Your child may give the family a weather report—or turn the clipboard into a restaurant menu. Either is fine.
If they are interested, explain that meteorologists watch weather and wind to help people make good decisions.
9. Build an Emergency Operations Centre
Put out maps, toy phones, vehicles, blocks, paper and clipboards and see what develops.
Children might invent roles for firefighters, helicopter pilots, meteorologists, nurses, veterinarians, road crews or neighbours helping neighbours.
The important idea is that communities solve difficult problems together.
Adults do not need to create an emergency scenario. Let children decide what their community is working on.
10. Make Space for What Happens Afterwards
If a child naturally develops an emergency story, make materials for ordinary life and recovery available too.
Add green paper or blocks for new plants, along with homes, families, animals, restaurants and playgrounds. There might be firefighters going home, animals returning or neighbours sharing a meal.
There is no need to create a particular ending.
Some children will move the story toward recovery. Others will simply change games.
Let them decide when the story is finished.
What Is the Parent’s Role?
Often, the most helpful thing an adult can do is simply be available.
Watch, listen and describe what you notice:
“You made a big place for all those animals.”
“That helicopter has been working for a long time.”
“Everyone seems to have a job.”
Rather than asking lots of questions, allow your child’s ideas to lead.
If something worrying emerges, you can gently introduce the possibility of help:
“I wonder who could help?”
or
“Where could they go that would feel safe?”
And if your child has no interest in wildfire play at all, there is no need to introduce it. Building Lego, playing restaurant, painting or dressing dolls may be exactly the play they need that day.
A Note for Families Who Have Experienced Wildfire Directly
Children who have experienced an evacuation, loss or another frightening wildfire event may respond differently from children who have mainly seen smoke or firefighting aircraft.
There is no need to encourage them to reenact what happened. Following their lead, maintaining familiar routines and offering calm reassurance are good places to start.
If you notice ongoing changes in your child’s behaviour or well-being that concern you, HealthLink BC offers helpful information for families in “Helping Your Child Recover After a Traumatic Event,” as well as information about when additional support may be helpful.
The Message Beneath the Play
Children do not need us to create wildfire experiences for them.
What we can create is an environment with time, rich and relevant materials, responsive adults and permission to explore whatever questions are meaningful to them.
If wildfire enters their play, the reassuring message underneath it can be:
Grown-ups pay attention. Families make plans. Communities have helpers. Children can ask questions. And keeping children safe is the grown-ups’ job.