Streetwise!

On Friday 15th October years 2 and 3 went on a trip to Streetwise, a life sized, indoor safety village. This trip was to encourage safety ‘In Our Local Area’- year 3 geography topic and to understand the importance of fire safety- year 2 history topic. Year 3 had a great time! We explored safety in the kitchen and lounge, but began to panic when smoke appeared from the recycling bin. Luckily it was part of the experience and all were evacuated from the mock emergency to conduct a realistic 999 call. 600 false calls are made every month in the South, mostly by children; after today hopefully none by our children.

Then we learnt about alleyway dangers- my group certainly felt uncomfortable walking through a dark, rubbish filled passage. Upon exiting the alley we boarded a real Virgin Voyager from Streetwise Central to learn about the dangers of playing in and around railway lines. It takes 20 football pitches for a train to stop and despite how fast some children zoom around the playground, none of us would be able to out distance a moving locomotive!

Next stop: Streetwise Heath. This heath is home to a pond full of real fish, a couple of rubber adders and a family of plastic moorhens. Unfortunately like real heaths around Canford, it is also home to left litter, rejected recycling and items waiting to be ignited. Most heath fires are started between 3 and half past by school children on the way home; we will be respecting rather than ruining our environment now.

As well as a heath, Streetwise also boasts its own beach and rowing boat. The children loved zipping up their life jacket and learning when and where it was safe to jet out into the waves as detailed by the different coloured flags. The boat bumped back to the shore and we alighted onto a park. Here the children were approached by a Streetwise ‘Stranger’ and I am proud to say that not one of the children allowed themselves to led away, accept a sweet or engaged in any kind of conversation. Well done!

The children, parent helpers and staff enjoyed the exciting and memorable interactive Safety Tours enabling all to easily apply learning in their everyday lives.