Road safety can be fun!

It’s never too early to start teaching your child about how to stay safe when out and about. But it doesn’t need to be serious – children often learn best through games and activities, so we’ve pulled together a list of our favourites to share with you.

Outdoor space or roads to practice crossing are not needed – there are lots of important skills that you can teach your child from home. But if you are venturing out for your ‘daily exercise’ as a family, we’ve included a few ideas for you too.

Hand in hand

One of the key safety messages for young children is that they must hold a grown-up’s hand to cross the road. You can encourage them to think about this by getting crafty at home. Together, draw round your hand and your child’s hand on card and cut them out. Let your child colour them in with felt tips or paints. Then attach the fingertips together using a split pin, so the hands are joined. Who else might your child hold hands with? You could make different sets for each family member.

Traffic light colours

Learning about traffic lights and what the different colours mean is so important. And there are lots of ways to teach this! Why not create three large paper or card circles in the right colours (red, yellow and green). You could ask your child to find objects around the house or garden that match the colours, or put on some music and have a boogie – but when you show the red circle, your child needs to freeze. Yellow means jump up and down to warm up and green means dance dance dance! You can also use the same circles laid out on the floor as part of a throwing game. You’ll need a beanbag or similar soft object – can your child throw it onto the red circle? And what does that mean? Can they throw it onto the green circle? And so on.

Stop teddy at the kerb

It’s a good idea to get your child to think about stopping when they get to the edge of a road. One of the best ways to do this: put them in charge! Children who are pre-school age or older love imaginary play with their teddies or dolls. You could lay a skipping rope or scarf on the floor as a kerb, and quickly transform a doll or teddy into a puppet that can be ‘walked’ by tying a piece of string to each arm and the other ends to a small ruler. Encourage them to go for a walk together – and remind teddy to stop at the kerb!   

What do signs mean?

If you have an outdoor space, why not make a route around the garden using road signs, such as stop, slow down and go. You could draw these out on card, or print off images from the internet (much easier, especially if time is short as you’re working from home!). You could even mark out a round-about for your child to run or ride around.

If you don’t have a garden, you could make mini signs for your child’s car toys or action figures.

Map it out

One simple activity that we do with your children before going out on nursery trips is a risk assessment. We draw the nursery and where we are going to on a piece of paper. We then talk to the children about the route and what dangers we might find on our way. What would we do if there was a big scary dog at a gate? What would we do when crossing the road? What would we do if a stranger spoke to us? What would we do if we found something on the floor like broken glass? You could try this before your next daily outing together.

Green Cross Code

You already know it off by heart: stop, look and listen. The Green Cross Code has been the go-to method for teaching road safety since the 1970s. Young children learn by observing adults and through repetition, so try to get into the habit of talking through the steps at every road you cross together, and remember to lead by example (even if you’re in a rush and there are no cars for miles!):   

• Stop – Find the safest place to cross and stop just before you get to the kerb.

• Look – Look around to see if any traffic is coming and check drivers can see you. 

• Listen – Listen carefully for traffic because sometimes you can hear traffic before you see it.

Support from your nursery

Our nurseries help children learn about road safety through activities at the nursery, on trips out and with our Ready Steady Pedal programme, which teaches children how to ride a bike and includes professional support and guidance from Isla Bikes. So if you have any questions about what you should be teaching your child about road safety and when to do so, just ask your nursery practitioners – they’d love to help. 

You can find lots of helpful advice online from Brake, the road safety charity, and THINK!, the government’s road safety organisation.