Teaching Safety: an On-Going Process

Teaching safety is not a one-time thing. It is something that you have to work on in varied ways. Here are a few ideas I have used:
1.Using pictures of various dangers (laminate them!), make a card game: Cards face down. Each person lifts a card and talks about what is dangerous, what can happen, how to remedy.

2. Bought or home-made books on safety, whether it be safety in stores, fire, etc. To make books yourself:
“I constructed booklets of four to eight pages. Eight paged books were made easily of four sheets of paper glued back-to-back, to form two individual two-sided sheets.. I laminated them and then sewed them together down the middle. After tediously sewing several books together with needle and yarn, I discovered that I could sew two laminated sheets together using sewing machine with no problem.
Page a left - text and pics page 8
Page a right- text and pics page one
Page b left- text and pics page two
Page b right- text and pics page 7
Page c left -text and pics page 6
Page c right -text and pics page 3
Page d left text and pics page 4
Page d right- text and pics page 5

Be sure to leave a bit of margin between the text (and pictures) and the edges of the sheets. Also leave a healthy margin in the middle of pages a,b,c,and d (ie, some space between page one and eight, page 7 and 2, etc.
Then paste page a and b back-to-back, being careful that the tops are both in one direction. Thus, page two is in back of page one, and seven is in back of page eight. Glue together pages c and d back-to-back in the same manner. Then trim a very little bit of the edges of combined pages c and d. I advice also taping the corners which were glued together. Fold each combined page a-b and c-d and crease. Then reopen. If possible, laminate each of the two sheets. Then place sheet c-d within a-b (so that page 3 faces page 2, and page 6 faces page 7.) The last step is to join the sheets by sewing down the center crease (between pages 4 and 5, together with the underlying crease between pages 2 and 7). This can be done with a sewing machine (easiest).

3. Hands-on teaching is the best. Talk about where the handles of the pot on the stove go, how to pass scissors (you hold the points), etc.

4. One final point: Teach him to handle dangerous situations pro-actively. For example, take the initiative to teach your older child how to light the stove safely. DON'T wait for them to try it first, without your teaching.....

Resources:
1 Colorcards: These are expensive, made for speech therapists. The single-objects cards are not worth it for parents; they can make their own easily. (And a group of mothers surely could….) HOWEVER, for sequences and stories, their cards are VERY good. Some relating to safety:
For younger children, “cause and effect” is good. Several of the pictures dwell on safety, though not all. (The rest are good, though,…..)
I highly recommend for grade school children the “Color cards” set of “Personal Safety”. It is very usable, and good for speech work as well.

2. Web resources:
http://kids.askacop.org/coloringpages.html (Police and safety coloring pages)

http://www.mrdonn.org/index.html#Safety

http://www.survivealive.org/main.html

http://www.mcgruff.org/