Early years: age 2-5 teaching ideas

By running simple, fun, educational activities like those suggested below, you can help prevent deaths and injuries of children. The sooner you start, the better; we suggest teaching from the age of two. Teaching road safety is an active, fun and stimulating thing to do, and children love toy vehicles, fire engines, and bicycles, so they're keen to learn more about them. The ideas below can also help you meet curriculum requirements and aid development of children's motor and creative skills, language skills, their understanding of the world around them, and their personal, social and emotional development.

See our information on 'what to teach' for more advice before you get started and see our resources section for materials to help you.

Teach that traffic is dangerous

1. Toy car Olympics

You: Arrange the children in a line across one end of a room or in the playground. Give each child a toy car.

The children: In turn, send their car across the room. Which is fastest? Which goes furthest before it can stop? Which car is near? Which is far away?

2. Learn about wheels

Make play dough wheels, and roll them around. Pick up a toy car and spin its wheels. Wheels mean that traffic goes fast and can't stop easily. It goes much faster than people who are walking. Traffic is dangerous.

3. Let's look at a car!

Only do this activity if you can park a car somewhere away from traffic where the children can approach it safely. The car should be parked on a flat surface with the handbrake firmly on and engine off.

You: Tell the children the importance of standing well away from cars, even when they look like they aren't moving. Take each child up to the side of the car in turn, holding their hand.

The children: Poke the car then poke their tummy. Which is soft, which is hard? Cars are hard and can hurt you if they hit you. You are soft and easily hurt. Look at a wheel. Look at how big and hard it is. It goes round very fast.

Teach them cars and other vehicles aren't toys. They're dangerous. Teach them to stay away from traffic unless holding an adult's hand.

Teach to always hold hands

1. Create a giant road map

You: Make a giant map of roads, paths and pavements out of coloured paper stuck together. You could include features that you have in your local area, like crossings or a park.

The children: Help you cut out pictures of vehicles, people, dogs and buggies out of old magazines. Stick the pictures in the right place on your giant road. Vehicles on the road, people on the pavement and in the park.

You: Practise with the children key road safety words related to what's in the picture. Can you see a...? How many...? What colour is the...? Then stick your giant road on the wall as part of a road safety display. Make sure your display is somewhere parents will see it.

This activity could be delivered on an interactive white board if you have one, or using a tablet or computer for a small group, using basic image editing software such as Paint to create the map, and Powerpoint to add the interactivity.

2. Looking and listening skills

What can you hear? What can you see? What can you sing?

You: Record some road sounds, or find them online: car, fire engine, motorbike, bicycle bell, a pedestrian crossing beeping. Play these to the children, and show them a set of matching pictures.

The children: Sit in a circle and guess the noises when you play them, matching them to the pictures you show, and saying what makes what noise, for example, 'The blue car goes brum brum brum, The big red fire engine goes nee nah nee nah...' etc.

3. Giant handprint display

Create a giant poster of children's hand prints and write 'We hold hands' at the top, and display it where parents and children can see it.

4. Colour in pictures
Older children with more developed motor skills can colour in the Brake photocopiable posters from our resources page.

5. Draw or make a road safety car

Use a small box and cut out circles for children to stick to the side for wheels, or just draw a car on a piece of paper and let children colour it in. Write 'slow down' or 'belt up' on the side of the cars, or draw a 30km/h road sign, and give them to the children to take home.