Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9201030334
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON NORTH CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`BUCKLE BEAR' TO VISIT 20 MORE PRESCHOOLS
Ask preschooler William Old what red, green and yellow traffic lights mean, and he'll tell you quite simply.Red means stop; green means go. Yellow means caution - not a quick zip through the light.
William and his peers are learning all about traffic safety at Greenvale Nursery School in Northwest Roanoke, where traffic safety has been incorporated into the classroom curriculum for four years.
Every day these kids learn traffic signals, the importance of buckling up and safe road behavior without even realizing it. This is, after all, no driver's education class. But it is a serious attempt to teach youngsters the ways of the road before they even get the chance to drive.
Greenvale's Preschool Introduction to Traffic Safety, piloted in 1987 by the Department of Motor Vehicles, will expand in February to 20 other Roanoke Valley preschools, with the help of a $4,000 grant from the Allstate Foundation.
Participating schools will receive a packet of teaching materials and a training video produced by the DMV.
Greenvale Executive Director Sandra Carroll said there's a strong feeling that the local program will become statewide and nationwide in the mid-1990s.
"You can incorporate [traffic safety] into everything," said Carroll. Greenvale uses traffic lights to introduce color recognition - go signals to start free-talk time and stop signals for quiet time. Kids even push tiny cars on brightly colored road maps rolled out on the floor. Carroll says many of their ideas have come from the Automobile Association of America and the DMV. They've even developed several teaching aids of their own.
A favorite of the kids is Buckle Bear, the friendly-faced, stuffed animal with his own safety belt. Kids carry Buckle Bear to his corner seat where they take turns sitting in the special wooden chair with a seat belt attached. Each kid sits down and listens to the click of the belt as he buckles it.
Asked why she buckles up, young Jasmyne McKoy answered, "So you won't fall out of the car."
Though many of Greenvale's PITTS activities can be done at home with parents, Carroll says, "the children are doing beautifully with it, but it just hasn't made the emphasis with the parents."
Mary King of the DMV believes the program has had a positive effect on the parents and siblings of the children in it. She notes the contests they've held offering T-shirts to buckled-up families.
"We thought that traffic safety needed to be taught to children at a young age . . . before they began riding bikes and walking, and riding the bus to school," she said of the DMV's interest in initiating the program.
"Hopefully it will stay with them when they grow up to be adults."