8 Steps in Safety Village

Our town runs a really cool program for kindergarten students, called Safety Town. Before they go into kindergarten, children can participate in a week-long program sponsored by the city police where they are taught topics such as: fire safety, seat belts, pedestrian safety, bike safety, bus safety, and "stranger danger". As part of this program they Department of Youth Services created a "Safety Village", with replica buildings, traffic signs, traffic lights, and roads. It is mainly used for kids to learn bike safety and pedestrian safety in a real life setting. We always drive by the Safety Village and this week I noticed that the gates are left open during normal city park hours. I thought this might be a good place to take Grace to practice walking. It is surrounded by fences, clean, and has new even, paved "roads". So we went this evening with her favorite push toy, her tricycle (which she is still too little to ride, but I thought we'd try), and my camera and Flip camcorder. And, it really was a success. Grace started out exploring by crawling in this new "bear crawl" she has invented (with her butt in the air) when she is on hard surfaces, moved to walking behind her toy, and eventually took 8 steps! That is the most she has done so far!


Note: I think Nana is completely correct about Grace noticing her shadow (see Comments). That is one of the great things about the video camera. I am too busy trying to capture everything on the camera so I miss what is really happening. It is fascinating to watch Grace and I do it a lot. With the camcorder I am also able to replay what happened over and over which helps me notice things I missed when it happened.