Optional add-on · Safety · 30 min · Fits Week 22
Medicine and Household Product Safety
Objective: Your child will explain that only a trusted grown-up gives medicine, that we never taste or touch unknown things, and that grown-ups can call Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222.
Materials: an empty, rinsed vitamin or medicine bottle with the lid on, a few pieces of candy, an empty, rinsed cleaning spray bottle, an empty juice bottle, index cards, marker, phone (to save the number)
Helps with topics listed by: New York
Warm-Up: Candy or Not? (5 min)
Set the candy next to the empty vitamin bottle and the juice bottle next to the empty cleaning spray. Ask: 'Which ones are safe to eat or drink? How can you tell?' Talk about how medicine can look like candy and cleaning liquid can look like juice or water. Say: 'That is why we have a rule. We never taste something unless a trusted grown-up says it is food.'
Mini-Lesson: Three Safety Rules (10 min)
Teach three rules and write each on an index card. (1) 'Medicine only from a trusted grown-up.' This means a parent or caregiver, or a doctor or nurse with your parent there. Vitamins count as medicine too. (2) 'Don't taste, sniff or touch unknown things.' This includes pills you find, cleaning products, plant food, and anything in an unmarked bottle. (3) 'If you are not sure, ask a grown-up first.' Tell your child where your family keeps medicines and cleaning products (up high or locked) and that those places are for grown-ups.
Practice: Safe or Ask First? (10 min)
Make two index cards: 'Safe' and 'Ask a grown-up first.' Read each situation and have your child point to a card: an apple from the fruit bowl (safe); a pill on the floor (ask a grown-up first); a friend offers you their cough drops (ask a grown-up first); water from the kitchen tap that you pour with your grown-up (safe); a blue drink in a spray bottle (ask a grown-up first, and don't touch). Then show the number 1-800-222-1222 on a card. Explain: 'This is Poison Help. It is a phone number grown-ups can call any time, day or night, if someone swallows or touches something that might be harmful. If someone will not wake up or cannot breathe, a grown-up calls 911.' Save the number in your phone together and tape the card inside a cabinet door.
Wrap-Up (5 min)
Ask: 'At a friend's house you find candy in a purse. It might be medicine. What do you do?' Listen for: don't eat it, tell a grown-up. Then have your child say the three rules from memory.