Stop, look and listen!
Wednesday, January 30, 2002
Children at Badgers Day Nursery in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, have been learning about road safety with nursery worker Linda Chudovszky Our bright idea
Our bright idea
We organised a road safety week to make our children more aware of their surroundings and prepare them for walking to school, which will be their next big move. The week formed part of a six-week project on 'people who help us'.
We borrowed the child-sized equipment, including a plastic zebra crossing, a lollipop person's outfit and traffic lights, from the local road safety department, contacted via the council. It was nice to have something we didn't have to pay for, and the road safety department even dropped off and picked up all the equipment.
We had the equipment for a week so we took the children, aged three to four-and-a-half, outside in small groups and went through the road safety routines with them.
All children love to dress up, so they really enjoyed the role play. We acted out what they should do at a pelican crossing, explained what the different coloured lights on a traffic light stand for and showed them how to cross the road safely. Each child was given the opportunity to take on different roles over the week. Inside the nursery we continued the topic by talking about road safety, and made a table display.
The children really gained from the experience. Following instructions helped develop their language and listening skills, while they acquired confidence through using new equipment. We even got the older children to instruct the younger ones, which strengthened the bond among them.
We will definitely continue to focus on road safety and hope to take this activity a step further next time by recording some traffic noises to add to the authenticity. We would also like to get the parents more involved. They were pleased with how much the children were able to learn without having to leave the nursery grounds, but it would be nice if the awareness continued at home.
Badgers Day Nursery is part of the Child Base chain
Further info
* This year's road safety week organised by Brake is on 23-29 September. For details call 01484 559 909 or see www.brake.org.uk