Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• Explain what active supervision is and what it might look like.
• Discuss how to create a culture of safety.
• Identify common risks that lead to injury in children.
• Describe how understanding injuries can help create a safety plan that prevents future injury.
• Summarize strategies teachers can use to help children learn about and protect their own safety.
• Recall several ways to engage families in safety education.
• Analyze the value of allowing risky play.

Introduction

Keeping children safe must be a top priority for all early learning and childcare programs. Active supervision is the most effective strategy for creating a safe environment and preventing injuries in young children. It transforms supervision from a passive approach to an active skill. Educators use this strategy to make sure that children of all ages explore their environments safely. Each program can keep children safe by teaching all educators how to look, listen, and engage.

What is Active Supervision?

Active supervision always requires focused attention and intentional observation of children. Educators position themselves so that they can observe all children: watching, counting, and listening at all times. During risky play (such as on swings, climber, swimming) educators would remain within arm’s length.  During transitions, educators account for all children with name-to-face recognition by visually identifying each child. They also use their knowledge of each child’s development and abilities to anticipate what they will do, then get involved and redirect them when necessary. This constant vigilance helps children learn safely.

Strategies to Put Active Supervision in Place

The following strategies allow children to explore their environments safely. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers must be directly supervised at all times. This includes daily routines such as sleeping, eating, and diapering or bathroom use. Programs that use active supervision take advantage of all available learning opportunities and never leave children unattended.

Set Up the Environment

Educators set up the environment so that they can supervise children and be accessible at all times. When activities are grouped together and furniture is at waist height or shorter, educators are always able to see and hear the children. Small spaces are kept clutter-free and big spaces are set up so that children have clear play spaces that educators can observe.

Position Educators

Educators carefully plan where they will position themselves in the environment to prevent children from harm. They place themselves so that they can see and hear all the children in their care, typically having educator back directed to the wall. They make sure there are always clear paths to where children are playing, sleeping, and eating so they can react quickly when necessary. Staff stay close to children who may need additional support. Their location helps them provide support, if necessary.

Scan and Count

Educators are always able to account for all the children in their care. They continuously scan the entire environment to know where everyone is and what they are doing. They count the children frequently. This is especially important during transitions when children are moving from one location to another.

Listen

Specific sounds or the absence of them may signify reason for concern. Educators who are listening closely to children immediately identify signs of potential danger. Programs that think systematically implement additional strategies to safeguard children. For example, bells added to doors help alert educators when a child leaves or enters the room.

Anticipate Children’s Behavior

Educators use what they know about each child’s individual interests and skills to predict what they will do. They create challenges that children are ready for and support them in succeeding. But they also recognize when children might wander, get upset, or take a dangerous risk. Information from the daily health check (e.g., illness, allergies, lack of sleep or food, etc.) informs educators’ observations and helps them anticipate children’s behavior. Educators who know what to expect are better able to protect children from harm. 

Engage and Redirect

Educators use what they know about each child’s individual needs and development to offer support. Educators wait until children are unable to problem-solve on their own to get involved. They may offer different levels of assistance or redirection depending on each individual child’s needs. 

What Does Active Supervision Look Like?

To understand what active supervision might look like in your program, consider the following example:

Both Yasmin and Maria are actively engaged with the children and each other, supporting the children’s learning and growth while ensuring their safety. They use systems and strategies to make sure they know where children are at all times, and that support developmentally appropriate child risk-taking and learning.

Maria and Yasmin have taken their three-year-old classroom out to the playground for outdoor playtime. The 15-foot square playground has a plastic climber, a water/sand table, and a swing set. Maria and Yasmin stand at opposite corners of the playground to be able to move quickly to a child who might need assistance. The children scatter through the playground to various areas. Some prefer the climber, while others like the swings. Many of the children play with the sand table because it is new. Maria and Yasmin have agreed on a supervision plan for which children they will observe and are always counting the children in the areas closest to them, occasionally raising their fingers to show each other how many children are close to them. This helps them keep track of where the children are, and to make sure no one is missing. If one child moves to a different area of the playground, they signal each other so that they are both aware of the child’s change in location.

Maria has noticed that Felicity loves to play in the sand table. She hears children scolding each other and notices that Felicity throws the toys without looking. As Maria sees Felicity and Ahmed playing at the sand table, Maria stands behind Felicity and suggests she put the toy back in the basket when she is done with it. By remaining close, she is also able to redirect Ahmed who has never seen a sand table before and throws sand at his classmates. Kellan has been experimenting with some of the climbing equipment and is trying to jump off the third step onto the ground. While he is able to do this, some of the other children whose motor skills are not as advanced also try to do this. To help them build these skills, Yasmin stands close to the steps on the climbing structure. She offers a hand or suggests a lower step to those who are not developmentally ready.

Maria and Yasmin signal to each other five minutes before playtime is over, then tell the children they have 5 minutes left to play. When the children have one minute left, Maria begins to hand out colors that match the colored squares they have painted on the ground. She asks Beto, a child who has trouble coming inside from playtime, to help her. When the children are handed a colored circle, they move to stand on the colored spot on the playground. As the children move to the line, Maria guides them to the right spot. When all children are in line, both Maria and Yasmin count the children again. They scan the playground to make sure everyone is in place, then move the children back into the classroom. They also listen to be sure that they do not hear any of the children still on the playground. Yasmin heads the line and Maria takes the back end, holding Beto’s hand. When they return to the classroom, there are spots on the floor with the same colors that were on the playground. The children move to stand on their matching color in the classroom. Maria and Yasmin take a final count, then collect the circles and begin the next activity.

Active Supervision for Infants and Toddlers

Infant/toddler care is responsive, individualized care. And it’s important to think about infants and toddlers that are cared for in small groups with a primary-caregiver system of care and also to think about the flow of the day as being responsive to the individualized needs of the children. Educators work very closely with children throughout the day guiding them through individual or small-group routines and experiences. Educators are providing responsive, individualized care, and they will know each child well. That’s an important piece of both individualized care and active and responsive supervision. They have a good sense of how each child gets through the day, what their abilities are, what their temperament is. Even as they grow and change from day to day, they’re able to follow each child in their care with an understanding of how it is that they’re growing.

The Importance of Teamwork

In most early learning and childcare programs, educators work together in a team. It is important to remember that communication between educators in the learning environment supports a child’s safe movement throughout the day as well as their ability to explore and grow in a nurturing environment.

Educators provide support to each other, particularly at key times of the day, like transitions. All those important, individualized routines require educators to work together, such as individual sleeping times, going indoors and outdoors, changing times, feeding, and eating times for infants and toddlers, and other times during the day when there may be a particular child that needs individualized care. It’s so important that the educators working with them are working together to support continuity of care.

The environment itself can be a partner in caring for infants and toddlers, particularly when it comes to keeping children safe. We want to create environments that provide places for children to play and be both together and apart but always in full view and within easy reach of a caring and attentive educator.

Creating an Environment of Yes!

An environment of “yes” means that everything infants and toddlers can get their hands on is safe and acceptable for them to use. One way to ensure this is to for educators to do ongoing safety checks in early learning and childcare environments and provide families with information about doing safety checks of their own. The educator and the child’s family play a vital role in making sure everything is safe, then stepping back to allow exploration.

Sometimes infants and toddlers will use materials in creative ways that surprise us! When educators feel uncomfortable about an activity, they should stop and ask themselves two questions:

• Is it dangerous?
• What are the children learning from this experience?

If it is decided that the activity is safe with supervision, they should stay nearby. They should be thoughtful and open to what the children might be learning. If the activity is not safe, they need to consider what else might address the infants’ and toddlers’ curiosity in the same way. For example, if young toddlers are delighted to discover that by shaking their sippy cups, liquid comes out; an educator may be worried that this water on the floor will lead to a slippery accident. Instead, they might provide squeeze bottles outside or at the water table. The educator is responsible for keeping children safe while also encouraging learning through curiosity.

Saying “no” to infants and toddlers or asking them to “share” is a strategy that rarely works. One way to prevent conflict is to reflect on, and then set up, the space where children play in ways that promote “yes!”

• What areas generate the most “no’s” or require the most educator guidance?
• What do the children need and enjoy the most when it comes to playtime?
• Do you have multiples of favourite toys?
• Do you have enough places where toddlers can play alone or with a few friends?
• Do you have adequate space for active play?
• Is the room appropriately child-proofed?

Active Supervision for Preschoolers

It’s important not to become complacent with safety practices. Educators need to keep it fresh, thoughtful, and intentional. This begins with setting up the environment. Learning environments will have unique factors to consider. But some general considerations include making sure that there is an educator responsible for every part of the space children are in, which may be referred to as zoning, and for every part of the day (including transitions).

How educators position their bodies is really important. They should see all the children in their care from any position in the room. And when in playing areas, their back should not be to the center of the room, but towards the wall. It is also important to move closer to children as needed (rather than staying in one place and potentially missing out on problems that may arise).

Educators also need to talk to each other, using back-and-forth communication, so that safety information is easily spread through the room. It may seem strange at first, sometimes, for educators to talk to each other; but it’s incredibly helpful for active supervision – when there are either changes in educators or children’s routines, changes in roles, changes during transitions.

One of the main purposes of zoning is to help all children be engaged and to minimize unnecessary wait times. When all educators know their roles in the classroom with zoning and tasks are getting handled, children are engaged, and the unsupervised wait time is really minimized.

During transitions or routine changes, educators need to have a heightened awareness. Transitions are challenging times for both children and their educators, so the risk to safety increases. One thing that educators can think about is how they can minimize the number of changes so that there aren’t as many transitions happening in the classroom. There should be plans what educators will do, before, during, and after transition times.

Creating a Culture of Safety

The topic of keeping children safe is only partly about policies and rules, and oversight. Those things are important. But most important of all, this is about educators, the people who work directly with children and families. Those people must be supported with opportunities for reflection, professional development, chances to think about the work they do and why that work is so important. What is challenging in that work, and what comes to them easily. It’s the ability of programs to recognize and analyze challenging conditions and be able to make improvements.

Programs must make sure that educators have that sense of commitment and responsibility, and that they have the ability to ensure children are thriving is critical. They must help make sure educators remember why we do the work, to be curious about children’s interests, needs, and ideas, to have the opportunity to be creative, to enjoy children and each other’s humor every day. These things, in addition to the policies and procedures, will allow educators to be fully present with children. Educators who can be fully present will keep children physically and emotionally safe and thriving.

The first step to doing this is to create a culture of safety. In this context, culture means the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a program; the way things work in that program and in that community. Experts and researchers have demonstrated that the culture of an organization plays a key role in all successful safety initiatives.

This is done by involving every staff member and committing to safety at all levels. Programs shouldn’t assume that nothing will ever go wrong. In fact, they should plan that something is going to go wrong. The goal is to create environments where there is zero harm, making it as hard as possible for things to go wrong.

Directors, managers, educators, and families must all embrace the belief that children have a right to be safe. All the adults in the program know that they are responsible for every child, all day, every day. People understand their roles and responsibilities in keeping children safe and embrace each of the 10 actions outlined in Table 1, that together support a culture of safety. This approach is holistic. It’s integrated, and community centered. It isn’t an add-on. It’s not a burden. It’s a way of doing business so children don’t get hurt.

Table 1 – Nine Actions for a culture of safety

Specific Risks for Injury

Wang, Toigo, Zutrauen, McFaull and Thompson (2023) analyzed injuries among Canadian children and youth aged 1-17 years, using data from the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth.

The key take-aways from their analysis are:

• Head injuries/concussions were the most commonly reported injury. (4%)
• The most common injuries for children aged 1-4 years were serious cuts/punctures.
• The most common injuries for children aged 10-14 years were fractures.
• The most common injuries for youth aged 15-17 years were head injuries/concussions. (Wang et al, 2023)

Injuries in Early Learning and Childcare Environments

Families “are naturally concerned for their child’s safety, particularly when cared for outside of the home. However, children who spend more time in nonparental child care have a reduced risk of (unintentional) injury. This may be because child care centers and family day homes provide more supervision and/or safer play equipment. Nevertheless, injuries in child care settings remain a serious, but preventable, health care issue.” (Lang, 2009)

In the next two modules, we will examine creating safe environments indoors and outdoors that specifically reduce the risks of injuries, including those introduced in Table 2.

Table 2 – Preventing Injuries

Documenting Injuries

When a child is injured, an accident report must be written. This documentation is provided to families, typically in the form of an injury or incident report. This report should include:

• Who was involved in each injury? (child/children; staff, volunteers, family members)
• Where did the injury occur?
• What happened? (What was the cause?)
• What was the severity of each injury?
• When did each injury occur?
• Who (e.g. what staff) was present and where were they at the time of each injury?
• What treatment was provided? How was the incident handled by staff?
• How could each injury have been prevented? What will be done in the future to prevent similar injuries?
• Who was notified in the child’s family? When? How?

It is important to keep these reports to analyze them to:

• Identify location(s) for high risk of injury.
• Pinpoint systems and services that need to be strengthened.
• Develop corrective action plans
• Incorporate safety and injury prevention into ongoing-monitoring activities.

In Ontario, O. Reg. 137/15: GENERAL sets out the legal requirements for documenting injuries and serious occurrences.

Injury Prevention

Hazard Mapping

One strategy for reducing injuries is hazard mapping, which is an approach to prevent injuries by studying patterns of incidents.

Step One – Identify High-Risk Injury Locations

1. Create a map of the classroom, center, or playground area. Label the various places and/or equipment in the location(s) that is being mapped. Make the map as accurate as possible.
2. Place a “dot” or “marker” on the map to indicate where each specific incident and/or injury occurred over the past 3-6 months (or sooner if concerns arise).
3. Look at the severity of the injuries.
4. Identify where most incidents occur.

Step Two – Identify Systems and Services that Need to be Strengthened

1. Review the information on injury/serious occurrence reports for areas with multiple dots.
2. Consider what policy and practices are contributing to injuries/incidents.

Step Three – Develop a Corrective Action Plan

1. Prioritize and select specific activities/strategies to resolve problem areas.
2. Develop an action plan to correct the problem areas you identified. Include each of the activities/strategies selected in this corrective action plan. Identify the steps, the individuals responsible, and the dates for completion.
3. Create a plan for sharing the corrective action plan with educators and families.

Step Four – Incorporate Hazard Mapping into Ongoing Monitoring

1. Determine if any additional questions should be added to injury/incident report forms to obtain this missing information.
2. When developing corrective action plans, consider prioritizing more serious injuries, even if they have occurred less often.
3. Make sure there is a reduction in injuries and/or incidents and the severity of the injuries as a result of the corrective plan.

Teaching Children about Safety

While it is the adult’s responsibility to keep children safe and children should not be expected to actively protect themselves, educators should help children develop safety awareness and the realization that they can control some aspects of their safety through certain actions. The earlier children learn about safety, the more naturally they will develop the attitudes and respect that lead to lifelong patterns of safe behaviour.

Safety education involves teaching safe actions while helping children understand the possible consequences of unsafe behaviour. Preschoolers learn through routines and daily practice and by engaging in language scripts and following simple rules. These scripts and rules may be communicated through voice, pictures, or signs. Children learn concepts and develop skills through repetition, then build upon these as concepts and skills become more complex.

Preschoolers need help to recognize that safe play may prevent injury. Educators can promote independence and decision-making skills as children learn safe behaviors. Teachers can explain that children can make choices to stay safe, just as they wash their hands to prevent disease, brush their teeth to prevent cavities, and eat a variety of foods to help them grow strong and healthy.

Preschoolers can learn to apply a few simple and consistent rules, such as riding in a car seat and wearing seat belts, even though they are too young to understand the reasons for such rules. For example, four-year-old Morgan says, “Buckle up!” as she gets into a vehicle. Although Morgan lacks the skill needed to buckle the car seat buckle and does not understand the consequences of not being safely buckled into her car seat, she is developing a positive habit. Safety education in preschool focuses on behaviours the children can do to stay safe. It involves simple, concrete practices that children can understand.

The purpose of safety rules and guidance is to promote awareness and encourage developmentally appropriate behavior to prevent injury. Educators may include separate rules for the classroom, playground, hallways, buses, or emergency drills. Limit the number of rules or guidelines, but foster consistency (e.g., three indoor rules, three playground rules) and base them upon the greatest hazards, threats, and needs in your program and community.

Safety guidance is most effective when educators have appropriate expectations and safety rules are stated in a positive manner. For example, an appropriate indoor safety rule might be stated, “We walk indoors,” rather than the negative, “Do not run indoors.” On the playground, a rule might state, “Go down the slide on your bottom, feet first.” As children follow these rules, acknowledge them for specific actions with descriptive praise (e.g., “Kevin, you sat on the slide and went down really fast! That looked like fun!”).

State rules clearly, in simple terms, and in children’s home languages; include pictures or icons with posted rules to assist all children’s understanding. Children often are more willing to accept a rule when they are given a brief explanation of why it is necessary. Gently remind children during real situations; with positive reinforcement, they will begin to follow safety rules more consistently. As children develop a greater understanding of safety rules, they begin to develop self-control and feel more secure.

Adults are fully responsible for children’s safety and compliance with safety rules and emergency procedures. Safety education for children, which include rules and reinforcement of verbal and picture scripts in children’s home languages (including sign language), is essential for handling emergency situations. Through practice and routines, children are better able to follow the educator’s instruction and guidance. It is essential that educators evaluate each child’s knowledge and skill in this area and provide additional learning activities as needed to ensure that all children can follow emergency routines.

Here are some strategies that educators can use to help children learn about safety:

• Incorporate safety into the daily routine.
• Involve children in creating rules
• Provide coaching and gentle reminders to help children follow safety rules.
• Acknowledge children’s self-initiated actions to keep themselves and others safe (such as pushing chairs in and wiping up spills)
• Provide time for children to practice safety skills (such as buckling seat belts)
• Introduce safety concepts and behaviors in simple steps.
• Role-play safety-helpers.
• Define emergency and practice what children should do in emergency situations.
• Introduce safety signs.
• Incorporate musical activities and safety songs.

Because of their level of cognitive development, many young children cannot consistently identify dangerous situations. They may understand some safety consequences and can learn some scripts. But adults must be responsible for their safety. Children often act impulsively, without stopping to consider the danger. By learning and following simple safety rules (e.g., take turns, wear a helmet) and practicing verbal, visual, or sign-language scripts, children establish a foundation of lifelong safety habits.

Engaging Families

Educators can engage families in teaching children about safety by:

• Sharing written and visual safety messages with families through newsletters, brochures, bulletin boards, Web pages, and take-home activities in the home languages of the families in the program. Emphasize safety issues that relate to your program and community.
• Integrating parent information with children’s learning about topics such as poisoning prevention and traffic safety.
• Providing safety information through workshops and during parent meetings; include information on a variety of topics, especially those that involve higher risk in specific communities, such as water safety, gun safety, or lead poisoning.
• Inviting community safety personnel to participate in workshops and share resources and information about how to access community services.
• Addressing specific safety issues, such as vehicle safety and pedestrian safety, through one-on-one guidance during pickup and drop-off times.
• During family conferences, find out what messages family members would like educators to reinforce at school.
• During home visits, offer to help families identify potential hazards in their family environment and ways to reduce possible injury.
• Post emergency plans on family bulletin boards and provide families with a written copy of the program’s emergency plan. Include responses to different scenarios (e.g., evacuation, shelters), location of the designated evacuation shelter, and a number to call if family members cannot reach the program.
• Routinely update families’ emergency contact information.
• Encouraging families to plan and practice emergency drills for fires, earthquakes, floods, violent encounters, or other situations that could occur in their home or community. Provide families with resources to develop a home evacuation plan and drill.
• Invite family members to attend the program or to serve as guest speakers as children learn about people who can help in emergency situations. Invited guests may include safety or medical personnel (e.g., firefighters, paramedics) or workers in related professions (e.g., construction workers, electricians, meteorologists, cleaning businesses).

Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for Optimal Child Development

Injury prevention plays a key role in promoting children’s safety, which is considered to involve keeping children free from the occurrence or risk of injury. However, emerging research suggests that imposing too many restrictions on children’s outdoor risky play may be hampering their development. Like safety, play is deemed so critical to child development and their physical and mental health that it is included in Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Thus, limitations on children’s play opportunities may be fundamentally hindering their health and well-being.

Eager and Little describe a risk deprived child as more prone to problems such as obesity, mental health concerns, lack of independence, and a decrease in learning, perception, and judgment skills, created when risk is removed from play and restrictions are too high (Eager and Little, 2011). Findings from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, landscape architecture, and leisure studies, challenge the notion that child safety is paramount and that efforts to optimize child safety in all circumstances is the best approach for child development. And families, popular culture, the media, and researchers in other disciplines have expressed views that child safety efforts promote the overprotection of children. These have the potential to trigger a backlash against proven safety promotion strategies, such as child safety seats or necessary supervision, possibly reversing the significant gains that have been made in reducing child injuries.

Families, caregivers, and educators can work to create a balance by fostering opportunities to engage in outdoor risky play that align with safety efforts. An approach that focuses on eliminating hazards, that have hidden potential to injure, such as a broken railing, but that does not eliminate all risks, could be used. This allows the child to recognize and evaluate the challenge and decide on a course of action that is not dangerous but may still involve an element of risk. Adults can also provide children with unstructured (open-ended) play materials that can be freely manipulated in conventional playgrounds.

This approach is a central component of the Adventure Playground movement. Notably, European and Australian organizations and researchers appear to be attempting to put this idea in practice, with North American efforts lagging. For example, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the U.K. released injury prevention guidelines that called for policies that counter “excessive risk aversion” and promote children’s need “to develop skills to assess and manage risks, according to their age and ability.” Both injury and play organizations, such as the U.K.’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and Play Safety Forum promote the idea of keeping children as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible. International collaboration would benefit from translating this into practice in a manner that is sensitive to concerns for child safety and children’s developmental needs for risky play. (Brussoni et al, 2012)

Risky play can also happen indoors through climbing equipment such as rock walls, hide and seek games and using tools such as hammers, saws and drills. Providing implements specifically develops co-ordination, creativity, and confidence.

References

1. Birken CS, Parkin PC, To T, Macarthur C. Trends in rates of death from unintentional injury among Canadian children in urban areas: influence of socioeconomic status. CMAJ. 2006 Oct 10;175(8):867. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.051207. Epub 2006 Sep 22. PMID: 16998078; PMCID: PMC1586087.
2. Brussoni, M., Olsen, L. L., Pike, I., & Sleet, D. A. (2012). Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for Optimal Child Development. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 9(9), 3134–3148. doi:10.3390/ijerph9093134. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/9/3134
3. Eager D., Little H. Risk Deficit Disorder; Proceeding of IPWEA International Public Works Conference; Canberra, Australia. 21–24 August 2011. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499858/
4. Lang, M. (2009). Health implications of children in childcare centres Part B: Injuries and infections. Paediatrics & Child Health, Volume 14, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 40–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/14.1.40
5. O. Reg. 137/15: GENERAL. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/150137#BK83
6. Wang C, Toigo S, Zutrauen S, McFaull SR, Thompson W. Injuries among Canadian children and youth: an analysis using the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth. Health Promot Chronic Dis Prev Can. 2023 Feb;43(2):98-102. doi: 10.24095/hpcdp.43.2.05. PMID: 36794826; PMCID: PMC10026611.