Friday, August 12, 2011

Safety Town

Olivia enjoyed the past two weeks at Safety Town. This is a 2 hour a day camp run by the Greensboro Police Department (local Resource Officers) and funded by may organizations, but mainly the Kiwanis Club. It is a 1/2 acre replica of a town. In the middle of the town is a crossroads with a working stoplight and crossing signals. The kids are taught lessons on safety there in the town as well as indoors using videos (Danger Rangers, a team that keeps kids safe) and verbal instructions from the police officers and the volunteer instructors. They learn fire, pedestrian/traffic, animal, stranger, gun, playground, ems/911, bicycle, and water. They got visits from the characters like Eddy Eagle (gun), Reddy Fox (EMS), and McGruff (stranger). They also got to see an ambulance, fire truck, and a bicycle officer. Of course, the most fun and memorable part of Safety Town is the little pedal cars that they get to ride around town. This is done in a very controlled fashion like it is a real town with road rules. They test the kids on the skills they learned and have a graduation ceremony at the end of the 2 weeks. The optimist club is a sponsor and they provide us with child identification kits (ID cards, fingerprinting, DNA swabs/hair samples) to have just in case. It is very difficult to get pictures. Due to privacy and protection of minors, they are strict about when cameras come out. But here are a couple of pictures of Safety Town itself to give you an idea. I would highly recommend this program. It is fantastic. And what is a more safe place than to drop your child off every day with about 10-15 police officers. :)





Sorry these graduation pictures are blurry. I had two discontent children in my lap at the time I was trying to take them.


1 comment:

Scott Baldwin said...

Very Cool :-) Proud of Olivia & Mom :-)