Road Safety: Read the Traffic Light

Six scenes fill this kindergarten page, each built around one signal on a pole above a strip of road. Three are car signals with three round lamps and a car on either side, one parked and one moving, under the chips stop and go. The other three are walking signals with a raised hand on top and a walking figure below, under the chips wait and walk, with a standing person and a striding person beside them. In every scene one lamp is lit and has short rays around it, and the two chips swap sides from one scene to the next, so the answer is never always on the same side. On the sheet shown the car signals show red, red and green, and the walking signals show the orange hand once and the white walking figure twice.

Reading a signal is the first road safety skill a young child can practice on paper, and the page keeps it to exactly that: find the lamp that is on, then decide what it tells you to do. Car lights and walking lights are mixed on purpose, because children cross at both and the two use different words. The yellow lamp is never lit on this page, since slowing down is not a choice a child on foot makes. The walking signals follow the United States pattern, with the raised hand and the walking figure used at American crosswalks.

One sheet, six signals, six circles. There is no Common Core standard for road safety; this is kindergarten to grade 2 pedestrian education, usually taught at the start of the school year or before a walking trip. Read the page aloud and act it out: stand at a pretend curb and have the class stop or walk as you point to each scene. The coloring face turns the same three lamps into a coloring task, and the crossing steps face puts the whole routine in order.