Safety Course Review
The topics covered in this course are must-have and must-review conversations. Here are my honest thoughts about the course.
I was going to save this course until October because fire prevention week is October 9-15. But, we had a recent community public safety night and the kids were able to learn from a variety of first responders. We were able to tour fire trucks, ambulances, helicopters, and a bunch of other safety vehicles. The kids participated in a smoke simulation activity and saw a training demonstration using the jaws of life in action. So, while it was fresh on everyone’s minds I decided to hop into this course a little sooner than planned.
Right off the bat I loved that course took the approach that God gave us our senses to help us be able to identify danger and there are a lot of things we can do to use our senses to prevent danger.
The course says it’s best for grades 3-8, but I feel like the first half of the course could be and maybe better used as an introduction to safety for lower elementary ages - more like K-3. This part of the course covers fire, water, electricity and natural disaster safety. My older kids, age 9, knew all of this material and it was definitely more review for them. And, reviewing this material is good so I don’t mind! But, the grades 3-6 student journals were really easy for them. The beginning of the student journal definitely appealed to my 5 year old and was perfect for him to do with us. They have some coloring pages and cut and paste activities he enjoyed. But, I could see where some older kids - especially upper elementary may get bored with the grade 3-6 Student Journals.
But, having said that, we did the last five lessons without my Kindergartner around. And, most of these topics are better suited for grades 3+. These lessons focus on body safety, being home alone, kitchen safety with knives and bacteria, technology, social media, peer pressure, and gun safety. Again, the work book was easier for these lessons, but definitely more applicable for my older kids.
With it being one of TGTB newly updated courses there is an excellent video to introduce the course. I am a big fan of all of their videos. The course is only 10 lessons and since we study one unit at a time, we went through the course in two weeks. We took two days on Lesson 2 which was a bit longer since you’re creating fire drill maps (which the kids loved!). And then we combined a few of the last lessons. Again, we had talked about a lot of this material already with my older kids so some of it was quick review.
I bought the read-aloud book pack to go along with this course which included The Turn Away Game and A Mushroom Walk. The books discuss pornography and sexual abuse. But to be honest, I didn’t love either of them so we didn’t use them. We are very open and direct with our kids and I just felt like the books didn’t flow well with some of our previous conversations. From early ages we start talking about these topics in very simple and age appropriate ways. We do our best to integrate them into our daily conversations pretty regularly so they feel natural and not an every once in a while awkward lesson. We have done lots of role playing and in the past I’ve also used and talked through these topics with the books Good Pictures, Bad Pictures Jr. and I Said No!
This course is completely open and go which was so nice! Since I knew this was going to be a short course, I wanted to keep it really simple and not add anything extra like books, crafts, and games. We just finished our Bird study which was a much bigger unit so it gave me a little bit of a break in between themed unit studies. Near the end of the course there is a lesson on kitchen safety and instructions to make and safely prep chocolate covered bananas and strawberries. My older kids did the lesson completely independently and then we wrapped up the unit with a tea party lunch. We served sandwiches with their chocolate covered strawberries and read some Dash Into Poetry. (HCL15 will always get you 15% Dash Into Learning products).
Overall, I would recommend the course especially if you can approach it family style with some younger siblings for the fist few lessons. If I had just younger children PreK-2 - I’d probably recommend using some other more hands on curriculum or materials to introduce some of these topics. If you have just older children - keep in mind it’s going to be an easy course. I might look into the grade 7-8 Student Journal lesson extensions and see if they may be appropriate for upper elementary years to add a little more depth.
Let me know if you have any questions!
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