Back to Basics: School Safety Tips

It’s that time of year again – when our kids head off to school. As parents, we worry about our kids all the time. This is especially true when we aren’t by their side during the day.

Today, let’s go over some simple school safety tips that you can review with your kids. Once you’ve gotten these covered, you can focus on watching your little one grow in confidence throughout the school year.

Getting to School: Walking and Biking

First things first, in order to be safe at school, your child needs to get there first! Whether your kid walks or bikes to school, if they are traveling without you, it is important that they understand the basic road rules for pedestrians and bicyclists. You should go over what types of street signs and lights they may see. They should also know when it is (and isn’t!) appropriate to cross the street – and that they need to look both ways before doing so. If your child rides a bike to school, they should have a helmet on until they arrive at school. 

No matter what, it is a good idea to practice your child’s route with them a few times before their first day. This way you can both be confident that they will get there safely.

For more about pedestrian road rules for kids and bike safety, visit our previous blogs that go more in depth on these topics. It is also important to go over safety rules with your teen drivers! 

Backpack Safety 

This is may be among the unexpected back to school safety tips for some. However, there’s more to backpack safety than meets the eye. You see, it isn’t always obvious when your child isn’t wearing a backpack correctly. If you don’t know what to look for, the affects of a poorly worn pack can wreak havoc on your child’s body over time.  So here are some school safety tips to remember when it comes to backpacks:

To ensure that your child’s backpack doesn’t result in an injury, be sure to get a sturdy bag with proper padding in the shoulder straps and back.

Your child should wear the bag with both straps and keep its contents light when possible.

Especially when it comes to younger kids, you may also want to include a backpack card. This is an inexpensive but practical way to keep your child’s emergency information, like their name, school and address, close at hand. This is a helpful tool for them to have in case they get injured or lost.

To read more about backpack safety and backpack cards, read you can read our prior blog post on the topic.

School Lunches

Packing school lunches can be tricky these days. Lots of kids are severely allergic to certain foods like nuts. As a result, many schools have restrictions on what foods parents can and cannot pack in their child’s lunchbox.  Be sure to check with the school and be mindful of their requirements.

When prepping your child’s lunch, you should be careful to prepare food on a clean surface with no risk of contamination. You should also check on whether students’ lunches are refrigerated and plan accordingly. For instance, you wouldn’t want dairy products to be sitting out all morning before lunchtime.

For more info on preparing school lunches, you can check our previous blog post here. And in case you were wondering whether those school water fountains are safe, we’ve covered that as well!