School Bus Safety Activities for Elementary Students

Teach your students about school bus safety.

Young elementary school students have much to learn in order to ride school buses safely throughout their years of schooling. When teaching school bus safety, carefully adapt the lessons to your students' learning levels so that they can deeply absorb and apply safety rules. Organize activities during National School Bus Safety Week, sponsored by the American School Bus Council every October.

Poster Contest

Inspire your students to learn school bus safety with a creative poster drawing contest. Choose a theme from the National School Bus Safety Week Poster Contest or let your students vote on a theme that's to their liking. As preparation for the activity, give students a list of rules and regulations for safe school bus behavior. Then supply them with markers, crayons or colored pencils to illustrate the selected theme. Use judging criteria such as creativity, expression of the safety principle and visual impact of the poster.

Safety Rules Scramble

Spark students' interest in school bus safety by giving them a slightly scrambled version of a list of basic safety rules. For example, you might write "from to or run the never bus" instead of "Never run to or from the bus." Depending on the class level, the exercise can also serve as excellent syntax and language practice. Other rules worth scrambling are "Stand back from the curb," "Stay in your seat" and "Always cross at least 10 feet in front of the bus."

Label the Picture

For younger students, you can teach school bus safety by incorporating drawings into the activities. Provide a simple, black and white illustration of a school bus to all the students. Let them use it as a coloring page for a guided coloring activity. Identify each individual part of the school bus, such as the wheels, stop sign, lights and bumper, and instruct the students to color each part in a specific color. At the end of the activity, check that the buses all have the same coloring. Afterward, encourage creativity by letting the students draw themselves and their friends peeking out the bus windows.

Find the Mistakes

For visual learners, provide a detailed illustration that shows schoolchildren acting out all the major "don'ts" of school bus usage. Have the students work in groups to identify all the things that are wrong in the picture. This activity makes an excellent warm-up, testing how many school bus safety rules the students know to begin with. As an extension, finish the lesson by quizzing students on how many infractions they remember from the original picture.

References

• National School Bus Safety Week: Resource Guide and Activity Booklet
• Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles: School Bus Safety Activity Bus
• American School Bus Council: Press Releases