Early Years Road Safety with Beep Beep Day
Longford County Childcare Committee continues to promote road safety with Early Years Services in the County this October. National “Beep Beep Day” takes place on Friday 6th October 2017 during Irish Road Safety Week. Traffic lights, hi-visibility jackets, stop signs along with road safety songs and games will be the order of the day.
We know that children learn good habits from a young age and that it’s never too early to start educating children on how to be safe on our roads. So, in the lead up to ‘Beep Beep Day’ early years services across the county will be implementing a comprehensive integrated road safety education programme called ‘Simon and Friends’. The resource contains four individual storybooks with stories and characters that promote age appropriate road safety messages amongst preschool children. It focuses on road safety themes such as holding hands, stopping, looking and listening and setting a good example in an effort to make young road users aware of their safety when using the roads. This enables these important messages to be learnt in a child-friendly way that is easy to understand and interesting for children.
Activities
Firstly ask the children what do they know about road safety. Probe their answers and extend their language and knowledge around the topic. Based on the children’s interests and comments you may want to offer additional activities in the lead up to ‘Beep Beep Day’ such as
- Arts & crafts
- Story time
- Visit from the local Gardai
- Outdoor play – building road/traffic lights/zebra crossings
- Songs
Traffic Light song – (to the tune of twinkle twinkle)
Twinkle, twinkle traffic light,
Round the corner shining bright,
Red means stop,
Green means go,
Yellow means very, very slow,
Twinkle, twinkle traffic light,
Round the corner shining bright.
For further information on road safety tips for kids and parents visit www.rsa.ie.
Here in the office we have lots of Simon and Friends resources that you may like to use. If you would like to avail of this please contact reception here to organise collection.
