For the last 3 years I’ve been in charge of our Red Ribbon Week at our elementary school, but you guys Red Ribbon Week is a pain. It’s a pain for moms. It’s a pain for teachers. And studies show that it actually doesn’t prevent kids from using drugs. Utah also has green ribbon week, for pedestrian safety, and white ribbon week, for internet safety, that I was also in charge of. All of these safety weeks are a distraction to the classroom. And if I’m being honest, our Red Ribbon Week had turned into more of a school spirit week than about drug prevention.
Safety Olympics
In an attempt to simplify our PTA decided to combine all the weeks into one and call it Safety Week. We might be the last school to figure this out, but it was great! The teachers requested to have it the same week as Halloween, and we received such good feedback about it that I want to share what I did here.
I love a good theme and settled on Safety Olympics for our Safety Week. With 5 days in our safety week and 5 rings in the olympic logo it was perfect. I changed colors to coordinate with our safety days.
Blue-Bicycle Safety, White-Internet Safety, Red-Drug Awareness, Orange-Halloween Safety, Green-Pedestrian Safety
I felt it was important to emphasize to our parents that it is their responsibility to teach their children about these things, but that we would support and reiterate those things at school.
Safety Events
To keep things simple we sent home a packet with instructions and an information sheet for each day with a pledge section at the bottom parents and students signed. This was the most time consuming part. I wanted the sheets to coordinate with their color. The school didn’t have a copy machine that could collate it all for us, so it took hours to get all of the papers stapled together. We could have just given the teachers stacks of each color to send home individually, but I felt that as a mom having them all together would be so nice to keep track of. In the end I think it was worth it.
At the beginning of the week the kids wore sports gear, and we asked the teachers to make a “flag” for their class to carry to the assembly. We had the olympic theme playing as they walked in carrying their flag, like the athletes do during the opening ceremony.
Halloween is full of tradition, so we had our activities go along with them, instead of adding more to an already crazy day.
The day after Halloween we gave everyone a break from dressing up and had it be walk to school day. Our school is a walking school, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. If you are a bussing school, this may be a bigger headache.
Thursday was crazy hair day, because it’s the one day from Red Ribbon Week they wanted to keep.
And Friday was bike to school day, again not too big of a deal because of our walking school. Although, it was the only day it rained the whole week.
Medal Count
Every day we had activities or dress up that the kids could do, and the teachers kept tally sheets. At the end of the day I figured out the percentages for each and awarded medals on our medal count posters. At the end of the week the classes with the highest medal count earned a party.
Because this worked so well for our school, and I already have everything made up I’m going to share it all with you. I’m giving away everything from our pledge sheets, medal count poster and even the medals files that I cut using my Cricut. The I printed the medal count poster at Staples as black and white engineering print for $7 and colored in the rings. It has slots for 29 classes and 12 events that you can fill in.
Large School Tally Sheet
My sister is in the PTA for their school and requested that I offer the chart without Safety Olympics at the top, so you could use it for many things at the school. Put the teachers on the left column and use it to keep track of fundraiser progress, etc.
Safety Olympic Banner
Print this large banner off to hang outside the school, it is 36 x 48″ large.
Safety Olympic Pledge Sheets
Five different pledge sheets you can use for your Safety Week at school.
Medals
Upload these medals into the Cricut or Silhouette software and delete the medal you don’t want. For the 1st place medal, delete 2 and 3, repeat for the other medals. Cut out of vinyl or paper. I used paper, but in hindsight vinyl would have been easier to put on the medal count poster.
This was such a fun week, and received good reviews from parents, teachers, and students! The winning class won a pizza party and I gave second and third the option of donuts or a popcorn party and one voted for donuts while the other chose popcorn. I would love to know if you use this at your school!
Niki says
I LOVE this! I was able to download some of the links (THANK YOU) but the large tally sheet is giving me an error when I click the link?
Becky says
So glad you love it Niki! I just got that link fixed. Sorry about that!
Niki says
Thank you!
Nathan Barnes says
Thank you! Great post!
Trisha Curdy says
Hey! This is awesome! I would love to get the Safety Olympic Pledge Sheets, but the download wasn’t working for me. ???