Community Rail Lancashire strives to engage children when they are young, in order to ensure the railway is a passion for life.
Introducing children at this age will ensure they know how to travel safely later in life, as well as attracting their families to use the railway.
A key focus in EYFS is Understanding the World (UtW)– part of the Development Matters (DM) guidance. The relevant Early Learning Goal (ELG) is;
“Children know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things. They talk about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another. They make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.”
The above ELG will be achieved through the programme as follows;
1. An initial 15 minute session in school (for both am and pm classes where relevant) will introduce CRL staff to the children. Tone and pace of speech is very important. CRL staff will show the children a train photo and ask where they think we work. Ideally, this is on a Monday.
2. The children are then taught the safety hand signals – Red, yellow and green/blue hand signals with matching word/picture cards. A laminated set will be left in school for children to use to teach their friends.
3. Ideally on Friday, the children then come on their train journey. Children will practise hand signals, but can also do a mini-line-map on clipboards if the teacher feels the children need an extra activity. The length of time for the journey will be determined through discussion with the teacher and based on the restrictions of the line.
4. At school, children are given their ‘Rail Safety Officer’ badges. Parents will be given a letter containing a timetable, a letter explaining the day and a family day ticket (or letter), which will ideally invite them to a CRL family day event, or other significant event on one of the relevant lines that CRL wishes to publicise. .
Download the EYFS plan here;
EYFS plan June 2017
Links to the Development Matters in EYFS; Understanding the World