It's vital for childcare practitioners to teach road safety from a young age. The sooner you start, the better. Brake, the national road safety charity, suggests teaching from the age of two.
Teaching road safety can be active, fun and stimulating. Training should build on children's existing knowledge and develop their skills through discussion and practice.
When delivering roadside pedestrian training for pre-schoolers, it is safest to teach the children basic safety skills using role-play and other activities on your premises, rather than teaching at the roadside itself. To teach children on your premises, draw out a road map and use ride-on toys and other relevant props.
Many early years educators do take children out on foot. You should only ever take children off your premises on foot if you have at least one supervisor for every two children so that every child has a hand to hold. Very young children who are walking should wear reins as well as holding hands with an adult. It's also crucial to assess the safety of the route you will take and ensure that it has safe pavements and crossings on quiet roads.
If you do take children out on foot, use it as an opportunity to teach and reinforce simple safety rules, like always holding hands with an adult, always staying on pavements away from traffic and stopping when an adult says stop.
Why not run a Beep Beep! Day - an educational road safety day, co-ordinated by Brake? It enables early years educators to spend a day teaching key road safety messages, and Brake will provide a free resource pack to use on the day.
To find out more, e-mail beepbeep@brake.org.uk or call the Brake education team on 01484 559909.
