NEW Road and Bike Safety program for school students

Introducing Wheely Safe Adventure, Constable Care Foundation’s NEW in-school safety education program for primary school students

The exciting story takes children in Years K to 3 on a ride to the park – with a monster on the loose, and Sarge the Dog missing, students are equipped with road, bike, and pedestrian safety skills, and encouraged to teach the characters what they know.

Wheely Safe Adventure is directly linked to the Western Australian Education Curriculum and is supported by free classroom activities and resources designed to complement the content delivered in the performance. Using captivating and entertaining puppetry, students will learn:

• Safe riding practices: where to ride; being aware of your surroundings; sticking with an adult; not leaving anyone behind
• Bike safety: inspecting your bike; helmets and the correct fit; protective gear
• Road safety: safe vs risky areas; driveways; train stations; crossing roads
• Sharing the path: riding at safe speeds; keeping left; hand signals and indicating when turning and stopping; when to ring your bell

The program is a 45 minute interactive puppet theatre performance, with engaging Q&A throughout the show. It delivers age-appropriate safety education around the rules and risks of being a pedestrian or a cyclist, such as:

• It is the law that you must wear an approved helmet that meets Australian standards while riding a bike
• People of all ages can ride bicycles, scooters, roller skates, and skateboards on the footpath
• Riders must keep left and give way to pedestrians
• Children often cannot see over or around parked cars, nor are they easily seen by drivers
• Children may have difficulty discerning which direction sounds are coming from
• Children may have difficulty judging the speed and distance of moving vehicles
• Children may behave differently when unsupervised or out with other children

The program is delivered by trained presenters and actors, and has been derived from an expressed community need. Wheely Safe Adventure has been developed in consultation with experts in education, child safety, road safety, and harm prevention.

It joins Constable Care Foundation’s growing list of incursion programs for primary school students, exploring a suite of issues, such as protective behaviours, basic first aid, emergency numbers, bullying, cyberbullying, and cybersafety.