As a parent, your top priority is to keep your little one safe. By the time your child has reached the toddler and preschool years, they’re old enough to start learning about safety. When your child has a basic, age-appropriate understanding of safety, they can explore the world around them with confidence.
Fun Safety Activities for Toddlers
Teaching children about safety
In the past, safety lessons for children often emphasized caution by focusing on potential dangers. While this approach had its merits, we believe a more positive and empowering method can offer even greater benefits. Safety activities for preschoolers and toddlers can – and should – be fun, engaging, and confidence-building!
While there are many different situations you may wish to prepare your child for, it’s a good idea to start with the basics: road safety, fire safety, home safety, and personal safety.
1. Red Light, Green Light
Lots of toddler and preschool parents identify road safety as the top safety concern for their children, and understandably so. A simple, well-loved way to teach road safety is with a game of Red Light, Green Light! Teaching your child what streetlights mean early on will help them stay safe while out on a walk. Our favorite tip is to play with circles cut out from colored paper – add a yellow circle to teach your child about yellow lights, too.
2. Look Both Ways
Learning what to look for when crossing the street and being an alert pedestrian will help build your child’s confidence and keep them safe. Until your child is old enough to cross the street alone, set a rule that they never cross the street on their own. Until then, hold hands and cross the street together. Demonstrate stopping at the edge of the curb, looking both ways and then safely crossing when the street is clear or they see the walk signal.
3. Stop, Drop, and Roll
There’s good reason why this is a classic safety activity for preschoolers – it’s a blast! Preschoolers and toddlers have lots of energy, and they love active games. Once your little one has gotten a hang of the movements, surprise them with this game during downtime at home. If they know the routine by heart in an educational setting, they’ll remember it in an emergency.
4. Safety Scavenger Hunt
Teaching your child to be safe at home covers a lot of ground, including kitchen safety and poison awareness. Teach them to not put things in their mouths by pointing out potential dangers – like knives, stovetops, household cleaners, and power cords – then turn it into a scavenger hunt by making a list of things for them to find. As they cross things off the list, explain the risks to them in language they will understand.
5. Stranger Danger
While you don’t want to make your child fearful of every new person they meet, you want them to be skeptical of strangers and comfortable trusting their instincts. Use drawings or flashcards to help your child tell the difference between safe strangers, like police officers or teachers, and unsafe strangers. Dramatic play also works well: act out scenarios that could happen with strangers and teach your child the safe way to respond.
Other Safety Activities for Preschoolers
You might want to explore other learning opportunities for your child. For example:
- If you live somewhere that’s prone to hurricanes, earthquakes, or other natural disasters, we recommend looking into age-appropriate disaster preparedness.
- If you live in a rural area or have pets, it’s a good idea to teach animal safety.
- If you live near or often visit the water, teaching your child water safety is essential.
Lightbridge Academy is a Safe Space for Children
At Lightbridge Academy, we treat the safety of every child in our care with the utmost importance. Our private preschool programs are a safe place for preschoolers and toddlers to learn, grow, and explore. Lightbridge Academy’s Seedlings® Early Child Education Curriculum does more than teach your child age-appropriate academics; we nurture the whole child, and that includes teaching them safety skills that will serve them throughout childhood. Our goal is to give your little ones the tools they need to thrive in any situation, both in and out of the classroom.
Learn more about Lightbridge Academy when you schedule a tour today.
