Street Safety Activity Cards

The Street Safety Song is designed to be an introduction to the basic concepts of street safety. For the song to be an effective learning lesson, it should be followed up with practice around the child's own neighborhood or school. The song introduces concepts and opens critical dialogue with your child and family. Repetition and real life practice using the song as a model are necessary for the child to generalize street safety skills to his or her individual environment.

Play the Street Crossing Song to learn the rules, then follow up with the following suggested activities to practice the steps in real world.

activities:
1. Learning to stay in the yard is important for all children. Walk the perimeter of what you deem acceptable "play space" for your child so they can visually see the boundaries. Also, make a large red STOP sign and lie it flat at the end of the driveway or use inexpensive orange cones (any sports shop will sell them) to give visual cues at to what is out of bounds. Hide items in the yard and have a "treasure hunt". Put a few items outside the accepted play space to test understanding of the boundaries.

2. Since sidewalks come in many colors and appearances, be sure your child know what a sidewalk looks like in their neighborhood. Take a walk and make a game out of staying on the sidewalk.

3. Set your own rules based on your child's age, development and ability as to whether they must hold hands or not when crossing a street.

4."Left, right, left" is an important concept, but can be meaningless without full understanding of why we do this. Be sure your child understands that they are checking to see that the street is clear before crossing. Be sure they are keying in on some concrete object down the street to the left, and right, and ask if they see cars coming and hear cars coming. Even young children need to know that not all drivers follow the rules...they must be a safe walker!

5. Practice with all street signs and combinations that your child comes in contact with.

skill development:
introduces dialogue and practice of important street safety skills, staying in yard, recognizing crosswalk signals, stop signs and street signs

view and print picture cards:
1" picture cards
2" picture cards (set 1)
2" picture cards (set 2)

Coloring pages:
crosswalk, don't run into street, don't stop in street, don't walk between cars, driveway, hold hands, look left, look right, sidewalk, stay in yard, stop at street, stoplight, street, wait for light, wait for walk sign, walk at walk sign, walk on sidewalk, watch driveway, watch for cars, stop sign, don't walk/walk, no crossing, pedestrian crossing, school crossing