Kids Safety Flashcards & Activities

These safety flashcards give a child one picture and one short rule at a time: “Stay away from hot surfaces,” “Ask the owner before you pet a dog,” “Telling is not tattling.” There are 60 cards in four groups of 15, for home, outdoors, traffic and personal safety, and each group has its own color.

What the cards cover

The home cards deal with the stove, knives, medicine, cleaning bottles, outlets, windows, the smoke alarm and who opens the front door. Outdoors covers pools, the beach, ice on a pond, playground slides and swings, bikes, bugs and getting lost. The traffic cards use American terms like sidewalk, crosswalk, driveway and school bus, and teach looking left, right and left again. Personal safety covers knowing your full name and address, trusted adults, saying no, secrets, and finding a worker with a name badge if you’re lost in a store.

Three games

• Spot the Danger. Six pairs of pictures show the same moment done two ways, like a child reaching for a pot on the stove and a child standing back while a grown-up cooks. Show one card, let your child decide, then show its pair.
• Sort It. Twenty picture cards go onto four mats. The cards carry no category color, so working out the right pile is the game.
• Match It. Twelve pictures pair with twelve icons such as hot, water, stop and crossing. Play face up with younger kids or face down as a memory game.

The answers sit on a separate key for the grown-up.

For the rest of the family

There are five posters, one for each group plus an If You Need Help poster built on four words: stop, look, say, wait. There’s a map to draw your home and mark the way out, the smoke alarms and the meeting spot; four emergency contact cards for a backpack, the fridge, the car and a grandparent; a promise that child and grown-up both sign; and two checklists, a home walk-through and a list of things your child can say and do.

The 8-page parent guide explains a see it, think, choose routine for each card and suggests five cards a week. It offers phrases to use instead of “don’t talk to strangers,” and short, calm scripts for talking about body safety and secrets.

Printing

Print at 100%, not Fit to Page, so the cards come out at 4 x 5.25 inches. The guide suggests 65–80 lb cardstock, or plain paper and laminating. The posters and checklists are fine on ordinary paper.

Questions

Does it give a specific emergency number?

No. The cards and forms say "the emergency number" and leave a line for you to write in your own.

Are the answers printed on the game cards?

No. The cards show only the picture, and the answers are on a separate key for the grown-up.