Health & Safety Activities for Children

Topics of Interest

• Topics of education for children to learn health and safety should be kept simple and not encompass overly elaborate and complex concepts. For example, fire safety is a common topic among child educators and is easily taught to children, because they understand concepts such as hot and cold, pain and danger. However, attempting to teach a child how to perform CPR would be a grand task indeed, as it introduces topics very hard to explain to children and encompasses responsibilities--saving a life, for instance--which a child may be afraid to perform. In addition to fire safety, topics regarding health and safety for children may include not talking to strangers, finding adults when lost and understanding the role of police and firemen as their friends. Further, when speaking to health, you should teach a young child the importance of brushing her teeth, proper bathing, hand washing and the benefits of foods such as fruits and vegetables.

Learning Activities

• There are specific activities that are conducive to child learning such as visual and auditory stimuli. There are many movies and musical aids found in stores and on the Internet which teach health and safety. Sing along with your child or watch and learn with him as he views the materials on a video. Afterwards, have him draw pictures about what he has learned or sing along later with you. If money is a factor in the education--as not everyone can afford a DVD or CD every time their child needs to learn something--then think basic. Educating your child about not talking to a stranger can be as easy as taking two socks and making sock puppets with them that discuss safety or eating your vegetables. In fact, the humor and odd presentation of "Mom playing with her socks" may actually aid the child in learning more easily as the memory will be more deeply processed and associated with a fun time with her parent.

Planning Your Educational Material

• While there are a number of materials available from local stores and online resources that will help teach a child about health and safety, it is not a good idea for a parent or teacher to simply take materials and "throw them at the child." It is essential to become part of the learning process with children as they learn by not only mimicking adults and parents but will weigh the importance of the materials by the importance you as the teacher place on them. An often overlooked, yet unequivocally resourceful, source of children's teaching material can be found at your local library. Not only should you look into materials concerning child health and safety but also, for yourself, look into topics such as child education and parent teaching practices. Often, talking with a reference librarian about your goals will allow him to help you find every activity for your child and teaching resource for yourself that you will ever need. The best part is that libraries are free for everyone, and librarians are very much concerned with child education. Other help for planning for child health and safety education can be found from your local school teachers, school nurses and fire and police departments. All of these people are highly educated and experienced with child health and safety and would be more than happy in most cases to take time to help you talk with or plan activities for your child.