The purpose of the Road Safety Award is to help kids learn to be safer on the road. This award covers a range of related topics from walking on the road to safely riding in a vehicle. Parents and kids often fight about the topics covered in this award, and I believe that the more our kids understand the why behind our “silly” rules, the more they will want to cooperate with them. My hope is that after completing this award, adventurers are not only safer, but fighting with their parents about the rules less. Road Safety is a required award to complete Investiture Achievement for Sunbeams.
Road Signs
Fulfills Requirement # 1
We started our meeting reviewing road signs. I showed them a picture of a common sign, and the sunbeams either gave the answer or their best guess. A few of the signs were easily recognized and understood, but most of the signs were unknown to my crew. However, they really seemed into guessing and figuring each sign out! I was surprised how by much the kids seemed to enjoy this activity! You’ll find the signs I used in the free printable file at the end of this post.
Safety Rules Discussion
Fulfills Requirement # 2-4
Ask and Discuss
- Tell when and where should you cross the road safely.
- At a crosswalk or an intersection. (If there are lights, follow the light’s instructions.)
- Why should you wear a seatbelt when riding in a vehicle?
- People who wear their seatbelt properly (or are properly buckled into a carseat/booster seat) are far less likely to be seriously injured or killed in a car accident.
Give road safety rules for:
- Walking along the road by yourself
- Walk on the side of the road facing traffic (left side in the US)
- Riding your bicycle
- Bikes are considered vehicles and follow the rules of cars (in the US). Ride on the right side of the road when a bike lane is unavailable.
- Riding a horse
- Horses are also considered vehicles (in the US). Ride on the right side of the road with the cars.
- Walking with a group
- Walk single file on the left side of the road facing traffic.
- Walking at night (Not required. Just a good one to add in.)
- Wear brightly colored clothes. Assume drivers can’t see you well. Consider wearing some sort of light band to increase your visibility.
Safety Talk
Fulfills Requirement # 4-5
As most Adventurers need to be in some sort of carseat or booster seat, I wanted to cover booster seat/seatbelt safety as part of Road Safety.
I was surprised how challenging it was to find a safety video that fit our needs – based in the US (every country’s laws are a little different, so this isn’t the best place to use resources from distant places), age appropriate (as in not made for toddlers – older Adventurers get offended by that sort of thing), and includes a patrol/safety officer (as per the award requirements).
I found a video that fulfilled everything on my list. And it’s even localish to me! This video by OHSU Doernbecher Hospital and Portland Police Bureau explains the stages kids go through from infant seats to no carseats and what kids need to be able to do to grow out of the booster seat. I loved that parents and kids watched the video together. I have found my own kids have rarely complained about our carseat/booster/which seats they can sit in rules because they know the why behind the rule.
Safety Game
Fulfills Requirement # 6
We played Cooperative Road Sign Memory for our game. (Free game in the printable file below.) To play cooperatively, you will as many card sets as there are players – this is going to make a very large game! Play game as normal, but whenever a player finds a match they already have they give it to the player with the fewest matches. Wanting to involve the adults, I invited them into the game as well, but they were teamed up with their adventurer. (Both adults and adventurers each took a turn, but they shared their matches.)
I have played Cooperative Memory in the past, and it’s gone very well. It is a rather long game, but the kids love sharing their cards and get so excited to find a match they already have so they can give it to someone else.
If you have many players though, gameplay is slow. To combat the slow gameplay, I had two people playing at the same time. Honestly, this added quite the chaotic element. It meant that no one was sitting out for any length of time, but everyone struggled to know whose turn is was. If you try this, I strongly recommend you have one person, who is not playing, to just watch the game to say whose turn it is. Once I started doing this, the chaos dropped substantially.
If you choose to cooperative play, you might also want to play with half-decks instead of the full decks. This will shorten the game and reduce the chaos (a little chaos should always be expected – you’re working with second graders!)
Printable Resources
Road Safety is a shorter award (for the Sunbeam level) and fit nicely into a single meeting for my club.
Hey, thanks for reading all the way to the end. I have a silly question for you, and I’d love to read your answer in the comments. What is your favorite road sign? (Don’t overthink this!) I think my favorite is either the bike lane sign or the walk sign!