Road Safety: Color the Traffic Lights

Six blank traffic lights stand in two rows on this kindergarten page, each a tall three-lamp signal on a pole with a strip of road beneath. None of the lamps is colored in. On each signal one lamp has short rays drawn around it, and the child's job is to color that lamp the color it shines. On the sheet shown the rays sit on the top lamp twice, the middle lamp twice and the bottom lamp twice, so the finished page shows two red lights, two yellow and two green.

There is no color on the page to copy, which is the whole idea. A child can only pick the right crayon by knowing that the top lamp is red, the middle one yellow and the bottom one green, so the page checks the order of the lamps rather than the meaning of the colors. That order is what lets people read a signal from far away or in bright sun, and it is what a child who cannot easily tell red from green relies on. Talk about what each color tells drivers to do once the coloring is finished.

One sheet, six signals, six lamps to color. Have red, yellow and green crayons out before starting, and ask children to point to the rays before they pick a color. It is the calmest page in the road safety family and works as a first lesson or a quiet follow-up to the base page, where the signals are already lit and the child decides between stop and go, wait and walk. Pin the finished sheets up by the classroom door before a walking trip.