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Written by the team at Dashing Ducks Croydon
Road Safety for Preschoolers: Our Kids and Traffic Workshop in Croydon
Every family who walked through our gate this morning has already given their child a road safety lesson, whether they noticed it or not. Waiting at the kerb, a hand held across the car park. Road safety for preschoolers is built out of small moments like these, and in July our Croydon educators spent an evening learning how to make far more of them.
Karen from Kids and Traffic came to Dashing Ducks Preschool Croydon to run a workshop for our team after the children had gone home. The next morning, the children got their turn with the resources she left behind.
An evening workshop with Kids and Traffic
Kids and Traffic is the NSW early childhood road safety education program, delivered through Macquarie University and funded by the NSW Government in partnership with the NSW Department of Education. It has been working with early childhood services for more than thirty years, so the advice our team received has been tested on a great many preschoolers.
Karen ran the evening session in our preschool room, with storybooks and teaching materials spread across the tables. The educators worked through how road safety fits into an ordinary day at the centre, and the idea that stayed with them was a simple one. You do not need a formal lesson. The teaching is already sitting inside everyday interactions with children, waiting to be used.
The next morning in our preschool room
The children did not have to wait long for their share. The following morning our preschoolers explored some of the resources Karen provided. One of our educators read a road safety storybook to the group while the children looked through the materials laid out for them. The table Karen left behind held picture books, a measuring chart and activity resources designed for exactly this age group.
A story about crossing the road lands differently when the child on the mat did exactly that on the way in. Preschoolers already know that cars are fast and roads are busy. What they need is an adult who can catch that interest at the moment it appears and turn it into understanding.
Road safety for preschoolers is everyday teaching
The workshop’s central idea was intentional teaching, a phrase worth unpacking for parents. It does not mean drilling children on rules. It means an educator notices a teachable moment and chooses to use it, so a pretend drive in the home corner might become a chat about buckling up, and lining up at the gate might become practice at stopping and waiting.
This sits squarely inside Outcome 3 of the Early Years Learning Framework, which asks educators to help children take increasing responsibility for their own safety. Road safety for preschoolers sits inside that outcome, and the Kids and Traffic training gave our team sharper tools for it.
Walking to preschool in the Inner West
Croydon is a walking suburb. Plenty of our families arrive on foot, prams in tow, crossing busy Inner West streets on the way to Wychbury Avenue. Young children cannot reliably judge the speed or distance of oncoming traffic, so the adult beside them carries most of the load.
That is also why modelling matters more than instruction. The guidance our educators pass on to families matches what the Raising Children Network publishes on pedestrian safety. Hold hands near roads. Talk out loud about what you are doing as you cross. Let your child watch you stop and look every single time, because children copy what adults do far more faithfully than what adults say.
Come and see the preschool room
Some things are easier to show than describe. If you are weighing up child care in Croydon and want to see how our educators fold road safety for preschoolers into an ordinary day, come and spend twenty minutes in the room. Book a visit, or read what other Inner West families have said about us first.
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