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Abstract
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Background Attitudes towards safety begin to develop in early childhood. However, there is a lack of educational material aimed for 3-to-6-year old children. The purpose of the project was to use modern means in children's safety education and develop fun online games with age-appropriate puzzles and safety messages.
Objectives The aim is to educate children and increase their safety-consciousness by creating engaging yet educational games. On the other hand, parents and child care personnel can use the games to discuss safety issues with children.
Results It is assumed that children's safety education will result in more safe behaviour as well as decreased accident rates. During the project, eight games were created. Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) coordinated the project and the partners and funders included Finland's National Broadcasting Company Yle, Student Innovation Centre Demola, traffic safety promoter Liikenneturva, The Finnish Fire Protection Fund and The Centre for Promoting Electrical Safety. The games are available on the popular Yle Pikku Kakkonen children's website and played by more than 2000 children daily. During the development process the games were tested in a child day care centre and modified according to feedback given by the target group. A group of students encoded the actual game.
Conclusions The games include different safety issues, e.g electricity, fire, personal protective equipment, traffic, as well as playground and lift safety. All the project partners contributed to the content of the games. The child day care centre where the games were tested has actively continued safety education. Also the games have received positive publicity. And most importantly, the children eagerly play the games and understand their message.
Abstract from Safety 2016 World Conference, 18-21 September 2016; Tampere, Finland. Copyright © 2016 The author(s), Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions
Language: en |