How to teach children road safety

First and foremost for pre-schoolers is an understanding of the vital importance of always holding a grown-up’s hand.

Reinforce this message by making ‘hand in hands’. Together draw round your hands on card and cut them out. Put your child’s ‘hand’ on top of yours and attach them at the top with a split pin. You could decorate them with felt-tipped pens to look like two styles of gloves. Organise other members of the family, including grandparents, to make ‘hands in hands’ with your child, too.

With young children, focus on the core steps:

• Find a safe place to cross
• Stop at the kerb
• Look right
• Look left
• Look  right again
• If the road is clear, cross – don’t run!
• Keep looking and listening for traffic as you cross.

A third of all children hurt crossing the road said they didn’t stop before stepping off the kerb, and as many said they didn’t look. Children love ‘teaching’ teddies and dolls, so get them to do so. Lay a skipping rope on the floor as the ‘kerb’, and quickly transform a doll or teddy into a string puppet by tying a piece of string to each arm and tying the other end to a small ruler. Just listen to your child instructing their ‘puppet’ to ‘stop at the kerb’, which will drum the message in for them.

A simple but effective way to get children to take ownership of safety messages is to encourage them to make up their own songs – just a repeated refrain and a nursery rhyme tune will do. Try ‘Hold my hand’ to the tune of ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ – repetitive, but it works!

DriveSafe & StaySafe run an annual competition for children to write the rap lyrics and/or music to a catchy song to promote road safety; the songs feature road safety characters called The Conies to help kids learn to use the roads safely.

Brake, the road safety charity, has produced two free interactive resources to help children to think about how our streets can be made safer by buckling up and concentrating on the road.

Take the seat belt challenge is a game for early years and KS1 children with a focus on the importance of fastening seat belts and putting loose items out of harm’s way when driving.

Driven to distraction! challenges players to hunt out different ways in which road users can be distracted and is suitable for all ages.

Virtual Road World is an app for kids aged 6-8 and challenges children to complete a series of quests by moving through a city, crossing roads and collecting bonus stars if they select the safest route.

Brake also offers lots of free resources to help teachers and parents teach kids about road safety.

The THINK! child road safety campaign features more than 50 free resources for parents, teachers and schools.