Head Start Happenings: September 2026
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Monthly Spotlight: Pedestrian Safety Tips
Whether your kids are walking to school, the park or a friend’s house,
here are a few simple tips to make sure they get there safely.
Teach Kids How to Walk Safely
Instruct kids at an early age to look left, right, and left again before
crossing the street. Then remind them to continue looking around
until safely across the street.
It is always best to walk on sidewalks or paths and cross at street
corners, using traffic signals and crosswalks. If there are no
sidewalks, walk facing traffic as far to the left as possible.
Teach kids to make eye contact with drivers before crossing the
street.
Children under ten need to cross the street with an adult. Every child
is different, but developmentally, most kids are unable to judge the
speed and distance of oncoming cars until age 10.
Encourage kids to be especially alert for cars that are turning or
backing up.
Instruct kids not to run or dart out into the street or cross between
parked cars.
If kids are walking when it is dark out, teach them to be especially
alert and make sure they are visible to drivers. Have them wear
light-or brightly-colored clothing and reflective gear.
“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.”
-Alexander the Great
Name Recognition with Children
Learning how to recognize, spell, and read our name is one of the most important things we learn as a child. Learning our name is a catapult for literacy learning in preschool! As a child, our name is the most important word to us and learning it leads to other types of learning. A child’s name is one of the first words that they understand and identify with. They connect their written name with something very meaningful. This leads to writing their name in a more conventional way.The first stage of a child learning their name is recognizing it. A child initially recognizes the shape of the firstletter of their name, will often identify it in other places such as grocery stores and restaurants, point to it and say, “Look that’s my name!” Even if it is just their first letter of their name.
Here are two examples with a brief description to encourage your child to identify and recognize their name.
Use a sheet of paper and any cups you may have around the house. Write on letter of you child’s nameon the bottom of each cup. Trace circles on a piece of paper using the bottom of the cup as a template. Now your child has “letters of my name” activity!
Write your child’s name on a sheet of paper and then cut up small pieces of brightly colored paper or you could also use those brightly colored office supply stickers. Have your child place stickers or glue colored paper, following the lines of each letter of their name.
Written by Regina Rhoda
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