The church burnt down :(

So last Friday, August 17th, we arrived at the daycare (via an alternate route because Church Ave. was shut down) early in the morning to find our power was out. We quickly discovered that the reason was because in the wee hours of the morning The Torch For Truth Tabernacle Church (which luckily, had been abandoned) was on fire. So for everyones safety, neighboring buildings and businesses were left in the dark.

This affected our services, as we obviously couldn't take children into the daycare without power. My son had been at the daycare first thing with us that morning, and experienced the darkness first hand. The other children, arrived shortly after lunch, when we got our power back, were all curious as to what had happened as well.

The next morning the story was in the newspaper. My mother showed my son (who is 4) the pictures , which helped him picture exactly what had happened. He then insisted on carrying the pictures around with him everywhere he went. He would show everyone he would meet and tell them the story about the church that burnt down.

Today all of the children went for a walk up to the old church site - which is now a construction zone. They watched the big back hoe lift the rubble into a dump truck to tow it away. They were very excited to see the heavy machinery at work :).

The pictures below are pictures that I had taken on Sunday, when I walked my son up to see it in person. He had driven by it with us a few times and wanted to see it up close. There has been much activity since then and not much of the rubble remains. In one of the pictures you can see him holding the pictures that nana laminated for him ( because he's a little rough on just plain paper lol).

Out of this tragedy there is an important lesson that we can teach the children - fire safety. The children have now seen first hand how destructive a fire can be, as well as how dangerous. We are going to be contacting the local fire department tomorrow in hopes that they will be able to come in to talk to the children and kick off our "Fire Safety" theme. Since everyone was very excited about the back how they will probably all be playing construction around the daycare and begin a "Construction" theme soon as well! ;)

See a story about the church fire here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2012/08/17/nb-saint-john-church-fire-556.html