Begin with a large piece of paper taped to the wall. Present the children with a selection of colorful magazines. Encourage them to look through the magazines for pictures of community helpers, such as police officers, fire fighters, mail carriers, teachers, librarians, or doctors. Provide child-safe scissors for cutting out the community helpers. Have each child glue one figure onto the large paper to create a community scene. The children can use crayons to draw in roads, houses and trees to complete the mural. A variation on this activity would be to provide coloring pages of community helpers for the children to cut out.
Invite the students to make thank-you cards for a community helper. On the front, they can draw or paint a picture of the helper doing his or her job. Inside, you can write a message of thanks that the child dictates to you. If possible, present the cards to their intended recipient.
Print pictures of community helpers onto cardstock. Have the children color in the pictures and then cut out the figures. Give each child a popsicle stick and show them how to glue the top half of the stick to the back of the picture to create a puppet. The children can then stage a puppet show, each taking on the character of their particular community helper puppet.
Provide each child with a plain white T-shirt. Have them use fabric paint or fabric markers to draw the uniform of one of the community helpers they have been studying. For a police officer, they can draw buttons, a pocket and a badge. For a doctor, they can draw a white lab coat with a stethoscope around the neck. When they are done, children can put on their shirts and play make-believe, using the community helper vocabulary.