Ready Kids › Home Alone Ready › Badge 6 › Lesson 6.3
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Smells and sounds you cannot place
Leave the house for a gas smell, or any smell or sound you cannot place, and call from outside.
1Watch
The smell
The smell
A kid halfway up the stairs stops and sniffs. She looks back towards the kitchen. Her hand goes towards the landing light switch, and the film stops before it gets there.
15 secondsShe does not know what it is. That is the honest situation. Watch her hand.
2The idea
Gas
Gas smells like rotten eggs on purpose, so that you notice. If you smell it: do not touch a light switch, on or off. Do not use your phone inside. Do not light anything. A spark is enough. Get out, leave the front door open behind you, and call from outside.
Gas: do not touch a switch, do not use the phone inside. Get out, then call. 911, or the gas emergency number on the fridge card if your family has one. Then a parent.
3The idea
When you are not sure
Here is the honest problem: you will smell things you cannot name. A burning smell. A chemical smell. A hiss you cannot find. A bang from the basement. You will not know if it is something, and this lesson cannot tell you.
If you are not sure, being outside costs nothing. Ten minutes across the road while it turns out to be a barbecue costs ten minutes. Ten minutes inside while it turns out to be gas costs more than that. Leave first, work out what it was second, from outside, with a parent on the phone.
4Say it
The sentence that ends the argument with yourself
Say it as you would say it to a parent on the phone
“I'm not sure, so I'm outside.”
It is a complete sentence and a complete reason. Nobody has ever asked for more.
5The idea
Tomas and the hiss
Twenty to five. A hiss from the kitchen and a smell he cannot place. He does not go and look. Out the front, door open behind him, across the road. He calls his dad from the pavement: Smell in the house, I’m outside. Dad: Stay there. I’m ringing the gas people.
It was a hob knob knocked to on, no flame. Dad says: exactly right. Leaving without being sure is the skill. Being sure is somebody else’s job.
6Decide
You smell rotten eggs in the kitchen. The light is off and it is dim.
Pick one to carry on.
7Try it
Leave or stay
Four calls
Four short clips: a rotten-egg smell, a hum from the fridge, a burning smell with no alarm, a bang from downstairs. Tap Leave or Stay. After each, the reasoning appears in two lines.
Three of the four are Leave. The fridge is the one that is not, and the page tells you why.
8Find them
Which of these mean leave first, ask later?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Practise the just-leave route from wherever you usually sit: up, out of the front door, across the road. Do it without touching a single light switch on the way.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Gas: no switches, no phone inside. Get out, then call. Not sure? Being outside costs nothing.
Next lesson: Message like an adult