Teaching Children About Road Safety and Signs

As soon as kids can play outside, parents teach them to stay away from the street, and when older to look both ways before crossing. These common-sense steps are vital for children to learn the bare basics of road safety, but do not go nearly far enough to keep them safe. When playing outside, they are exposed to a plethora of hazards that vary based on the neighborhood and community. Not only is it important for them to look both ways before crossing a road, but it can be lifesaving to know where appropriate places to cross are located.

Thus, road safety should always include learning road signs and symbols. While traffic signs are meant for motorists, they keep pedestrians—including kids—safe, too! Basic road signs and symbols require little to no reading skills and can be taught to the youngest of learners. The best way to teach about road safety is by heading outdoors to find and discuss them and reinforcing their learning using road signs worksheets from Kids Academy! 

Go on a Scavenger Hunt to Introduce Road Signs

To teach children road signs, all that is needed is to pick a beautiful day to head outside for a drive with your learner. Simply take a drive around your community and have your child point out any sign that they see and discuss. Keep an eye out for the following:

• Stop signs
• Yield signs
• Any sign related to school and/or kids
• Crosswalks
• Hazard signs, like slippery or icy when wet
• Signs prohibiting biking or walking
• Railroad crossings

It’s also important that children experience crossing at crosswalks and obeying signs and signals. For this, get out of the car and take a walk together to demonstrate where to walk, what signs to look for, and how to actuate electronic crosswalk signals. Make it extra fun by crossing a street to get to a playground!

Reinforce Learning Using Worksheets from Kids Academy

Finding and discussing road signs is a great first step, but learners must cement their learning so they remember it when they’re out and about for years to come. After a scavenger hunt talk about the signs they found and compare them to those found on the worksheets below:

In both worksheets above, kids must view the pictures to understand what’s happening in each and which would be the most appropriate for that situation. This worksheet helps them go beyond merely recognizing the sign’s appearance to think about what hazards exist on the road. Encourage learners to recall their scavenger hunt; did they see any of these signs, or would any of them be helpful around their neighborhood?

There are other signs common within the community that young learners will surely notice, but not all of them are specific to road safety. Nevertheless, children must learn to differentiate them from other important signs and symbols they will inevitably encounter. Learning to interpret community signs can also be essential for their safety when out with family or friends.

The first worksheet above again offers pictures for kids to interpret and choose the relevant sign. While some are road signs, others represent other common community symbols and can help learners understand that there are many contexts and purposes for which signs are helpful.

The second worksheet directly helps learners to differentiate between types of signs and their purposes by allowing them to select the scenario that matches each sign so that each option has a correct context and answer.

Learning road signs is crucial for children as it helps them develop essential safety skills when they are playing or walking outside. Allow Kids Academy to help keep them safe by using the worksheets above to solidify their learning!