3rd June 2024
Child Safety Week
Child Safety Week is all about raising awareness about children’s physical safety. It’s an annual community education campaign, to hopefully give children the freedom to grow and learn, safe from serious harm [source]. Incepted by the Child Accident Prevention Trust 40 years ago, they are committed to empowering, educating, and influencing families and other responsible adults in children’s lives to do better.
“The scale of the problem is huge: every year, in England alone, 55 under-fives die due to accidents in their own homes and 40,000 are admitted to hospital. The emergency hospital admission rate is 40% higher for children from the most deprived communities.
36 children died on UK roads last year and 2,235 were seriously injured in road accidents. Children living in the most deprived areas are three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured as a pedestrian and six times more likely to be killed or seriously injured as a cyclist.” – CAPT
As teachers, there is a deep responsibility for the livelihood of children, both mentally and physically. Not only must you provide an emotionally stable and safe environment for children to learn, but you also must provide an environment that prevents or lowers physical injury.
Joseph Raffell, our Associate Director of Safeguarding, says, “Safeguarding is at the core of everything we do, it’s crucial that we create safe environments for children of all ages and backgrounds to grow and thrive”
Here are 4 different things you can do in your classroom in honour of Child Safety Week:
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Animal safety
Most children love animals; however, it’s important that you educate your students on how to be safe around animals, especially domestic animals such as cats and dogs. First, focus on the theory behind animals. There will be many children in your class who have pets or interact with animals regularly, but you’ll also have a portion of children who don’t.
Focus on getting your students to learn from each other, so pair students up (those with pets and those without) and get them to teach each other on how to greet animals. When students are incorrect, correct them calmly and explain to the class why a certain approach is wrong or right.
You can also do this in the form of role-play and educational videos. Particularly for dogs, it’s so crucial to teach children from a young age how to interact with them as they can be unpredictable, especially if they don’t know someone trying to approach them.
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Hot water safety
Although children of certain age ranges shouldn’t be handling hot water, you may teach an age range who are currently in the process of learning things such as making cups of tea, taking baths for the first time, or cooking at home with their parents. Teaching students simple things such as how to hold a mug properly can enable them to be better equipped when they are around hot water. You can also show them visually when it is (and isn’t) appropriate to pick something up that is hot.
For example, if a drink has steam coming out of it – then it’s not safe to pick it up without the supervision of an adult! If you have students in the age range of taking a bath for the first time, you can show them how to test water (with their elbow) and simulate this with warm water and cold water.
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Road safety
Road safety is crucial for children to learn at a young age, and educating students on how to cross the road safely, read traffic lights, and understand other hazards is important. A great exercise that you can do is taking students on a short (and safe) walk outside of the school where they can learn about hazards and how to do things safely. If you’re doing this, make sure that you have additional support from a teaching assistant. You can also get a guest speaker to come into your classroom to give a talk on road safety!
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Safety in the kitchen
There are so many different ways that you can talk about this! From giving students a 101 on what is dangerous in a kitchen to talking them through things you should and shouldn’t use in the kitchen (knives, cleaning products etc) this can be a whole topic in itself. A great way to talk about this would be to break down what you want to specifically focus on in the kitchen and do a mini-session on that.
Some activity ideas include:
- Safety in the kitchen wordsearch (things that are dangerous to use)
- How to carry something that may be hot (similar to hot water safety, you can simulate this with a warm plate of food)
- How to clean up something that is spilt
- Why you should always ask if you’re unsure (a 101 on the importance of speaking to a parent/guardian before doing certain things in the kitchen)
We hope you enjoy these ideas and have a productive (and safe) Child Safety Week!
For more resources, click here.
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