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Bright ideas for your Beep Beep! Day

Beepkidssmall It's really easy and fun to take part in Beep Beep Day and help save little lives.

Read on for our 8 bright steps to a great Beep Beep Day to ensure children and their families get road safety messages as well as meeting curriculum goals too.

There are also lots of ways you can raise funds for Brake and our work with bereaved families during your Beep Beep Day so thank you in advance for helping the charity!

Even if you only do two or three of these ideas, you'll still have a great day. Read on and get planning!

Bright tots! Children are sponsored to wear something crazily bright - hats, tops, or socks, or whatever they've got.

It makes a great picture for your noticeboard and newsletter and helps emphasise the importance of drivers watching out for kids by slowing down and taking special care around children's homes and your premises.

Hand print and paint for safety! Make a giant hand print poster for your foyer using kids' hands and poster paints to help parents and children understand the importance of holding hands. Write across the top: "Going home? Hold hands!" You could also make a giant poster of pavements, roads, parks and buildings while kids cut out pictures of people, kids, buggies, dogs and vehicles from old magazines. Then get kids to stick the pictures in the safest places; children on pavements and in parks, while vehicles go on roads. Or print off copies of our colour-in poster downloads in our teaching resource centre.

Sing, listen, learn! Sing a road safety song with actions using the words stop, go, pavement and hold hands. Invent new verses to Wheels on the bus, such as "The children and the grown ups all hold hands, all hold hands, all hold hands". Listen to road noises recorded in advance eg. an ambulance, car, pelican crossing. Can the children tell what they are? Talk to kids using key road safety words such as pavement, kerb, road, car, danger, traffic, stop, look, and listen. Play road safety games on the internet. Go to the kids section of this site for loads of links. Or use this leader-led lesson script to teach simple messages including 'wheels go faster than legs', 'traffic is hard and you are soft' and 'wear something bright'. It includes a great rhyme about crossing roads safely (with your mum or dad).

Get wet for safety! Invite your local fire service to come in and help the children wash parents' cars in return for a Beep Beep donation. Kids love getting wet and busy, and fire hoses are very exciting. It's also a great way to teach kids that cars feel hard and are big and kids are soft and small. You can also use it as an opportunity to get kids to hand out to parents campaign flyers they have made themselves, for example with pictures of people holding hands, or kids using child seats, and carrying messages on them that you write, such as Hold hands, Use child seats, Slow Down.

Ride on! Make chalked-on roads in your secure playground/garden or hall and cardboard traffic lights and pelican crossings and zebra crossings! Sometimes, your local authority road safety team can lend you pretend road equipment too. Kids 'drive' on any safe ride-on, supervised by staff or practise crossing the pretend roads safely on foot. Staff shout out instructions, for example, red means stop, green means go! Safety first! Only use push-along ride ons, not bikes with pedals and do not allow any kind of motorised 'toy' vehicles - these are dangerous. Use as an opportunity to teach key language, such as pavements, traffic, stop, slow, hold hands, kerb, etc. If asking any children's parents to bring in ride-ons, remind them not to allow children to ride them on on the way to your premises unless the route is entirely 'off road'.

Celebrity visit! Why not ask your local crossing patrol person or police officer to come along and help on the day and explain why they wear a big yellow coat? Young children love someone in uniform and they are often happy to help! Make sure this professional understands the messages you want them to deliver. Pre-school children are too young to be taught how to cross roads unaccompanied. It is much more important and valuable to teach them key road safety language and to teach them to hold hands, stay still in their child seat, and to stay on pavements and away from dangerous traffic. You could also invite along Brake's mascot Zak the Zebra! He is a busy zebra, so book early!

Bake for Brake at break time! Follow this yummy traffic-light biscuit recipe and then scoff them with the kids, saving some to flog to parents to raise more money for Brake! Or have traffic light fruit at break time to be super-healthy: strawberries, satsumas and kiwis do the trick! It's a great opportunity to teach kids that red means stop, and to teach them about street equipment such as traffic lights and safer places to cross such as traffic-light controlled crossings. Show them pictures of these things, or take them on a closely-supervised walk on a safe pavement to show them a traffic-light controlled crossing (one adult per two children so you have a hand for each child).

Get the media along! Beep Beep! Day is a great way to raise awareness of the importance of driving slowly and safely in communities to protect our vulnerable and youngest children and get free publicity. And kids and parents often love being in the paper or on local radio! Brake can issue a press release for you if you are fundraising for the charity, and tell you the contact details of local journalists. Call us on 01484 559909. Ring up local journalists and photographers the day before and invite them along!