Safety Town is being held this week at Washington Elementary School. The program, led by Megan Parenteau and Stacy Olson, is open to children eligible to enter kindergarten this fall.
The children learn about safety in a variety of settings said Olson, while also getting some help driving around town in Washington’s gym from the Crookston Police Department. “Safety Town is a comprehensive safety program for children who are age eligible to enter kindergarten,” explains Olson. “We cover a variety of safety topics from home safety, bicycle safety, gun safety, farm safety, to 911 awareness when and when not to dial 911. They get to tour a fire engine, an ambulance, and a police car. We have our on the town, where we transform our gym here at Washington School into its own little city with some roads, driveways, sidewalks, and buildings they can sit by and read. The children learn hand signals. They also learn how to walk around the town along with driving safely. So some traffic safety with a working stoplight, a railroad track along with lots of crosswalks around our town. And the Crookston Police Department is in there all week helping the children in the town.”
Parenteau said the kids and their teen volunteers still have plenty of safety to learn about before graduation on Friday. “We have 40 participants this year for our safety town program,” said Parenteau. “We have 19 teen volunteers helping out from the Crookston High School as well. They are helping out in our groups as the kids rotate through all their stations. Tomorrow we have Otter Tail Power coming in to talk to the kids about electrical and lightning safety. We have some people from RiverView coming in to talk about what it takes to be safe in the summer. They’ll have some boat safety, healthy eating habits and Safe and Healthy Me coming in to talk about different things with the kids. They’ll do an art project following up on their fire safety that is going on today. On Friday, we’ll have stations in the morning for the participants, and we’ll end the day with a graduation ceremony. That’s a lot of fun for the kids, and they always look forward to that on Friday.”
The kids also learn about playground safety, animal/pet safety, passenger safety, train safety, and poison safety throughout the week.
