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Sometimes kids just don’t get or overlook safety issues. This mini unit helps them to examine what safety means to them. It also gives them some ideas for creatively implementing their ideas and how to communicate safety messages to others.

Activities:

1. Find out about four health and safety services your community, county, or state provides to protect you and others. Visit or write to one of these agencies and learn what it does and how to contact it if you need its services. Examples of these agencies could include: water or sewerage processing facility, department of traffic safety, hurricane or other weather bureau, etc.

2. Survey your home to find out the number and types of accidents that people have had in the last year. Discover how and where these accidents have occurred most frequently. Are toys being left in walking areas? Are stairs or hallways cluttered? Is their inadequate lighting in an attic or basement or on a stairwell? Do people forget to put the shower curtain inside the tub during a shower and water is spilled on the floor causing a slipping hazard? Discuss ways to prevent such accidents from happening again. Implement at least two of these changes and then determine if these changes are working.

3. Make a booklet or audiocassette tape explaining the safety rules for four of the following situations:
---Talking to strangers
---Riding in a car, bus, train, or plane
---Being at home alone
---Riding a bike
---Babysitting
---Being in public places (elevators, playgrounds, shopping areas, restrooms)
---Swimming, fishing, or boating in a lake
---Swimming, fishing, or boating on the ocean
---Ice skating on a lake or at a rink.
Share your booklet or tape with others, especially someone who is younger.

4. Bicycle falls and falls from inline skates are a major cause of children’s head injuries. It has been proven that helmets reduce the number of head injuries nationwide. From your local bicycle or safety organization, learn what you can about helmets: their ability to protect, their cost, the different types.

5. Plan an educational event for younger children concerning safe biking practices.

6. What are the traffic laws that affect bicyclists? Do bicyclists have to follow the same traffic laws as cars and motorcycles? You might be surprised at the answer.

7. Draw a poster about bike safety.

8. Plan, talk about, and practice fire escape routes for your home or other meeting place.

9. Plan a multimedia presentation on safety. You can make your own video, musical presentation, skit, or puppet show. You could even design a computer web page.

10. Conduct a safety check of your home. Spot and correct hazards with the help of family members. Be alert for problem areas that might endanger a family member who has a disability or who is ill, an infant or toddler, or an elderly person who has problems with eyesight or walking.

11. List the following information and post it in a handy spot: phone numbers of police, fire department, poison control center, doctor, and ambulance.

12. Write and act out a safety public service announcement or commercial that could be aired on radio or cable television.

13. Take a hazard identification hike along a bike path, foot trail, horse trail, skateboard course, or other similar place. Identify place where you could get hurt or unsafe practices that could cause you trouble. Set up some way to warn others of the hazards or work to remove them.

14. What are some of the special safety concerns where you live? Florida residents have hurricane season, the western states deal with tornado season, other areas of the world deal with regular rainy seasons and floods. Do you have little children living with you? Do you have an older person with arthritis living with you? Do you know someone that has a physical challenge? What would the safety issues be for them?

15. Now that you have learned something about safety, do you think it is a good idea to be prepared? Why or why not?

Copyright 2001 Kathryn Martinez. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

About Kathryn Martinez: I'm a SAHM, home schooling mother of 4 children, 1 husband, and a neurotic cat. This is our sixth year of home schooling. I worked for over 10 years at USF in an education and training department. I hope that by sharing my experience with other home schoolers, both the new and the not-so-new and those just considering home schooling, I will pass along all the help that was given to me when I first started out.