AU2004202153A1 - Teaching aid for childhood safety education - Google Patents

Description

AUSTRALIA

Patents Act 1990 COMPLETE SPECIFICATION STANDARD PATENT Applicant(s): SIMON WONG Invention Title: TEACHING AID FOR CHILDHOOD SAFETY EDUCATION The following statement is a full description of this invention, including the best method of performing it known to me/us: 2 A TEACHING AID FOR CHILDHOOD SAFETY EDUCATION Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a teaching aid for childhood safety education and in particular, though not exclusively, to a teaching aid that can be used to warn children of potentially dangerous household items.

Background of the Invention Child safety is a paramount issue in both the health and education of children in their formative years.

Injury is still the leading killer of 1 to 14 year old in every industrialised country.

A number of childhood safety teaching aids have been proposed. One teaching aid involves a character called "Giddy Goanna" featured in various media including books, Internet web pages and brochures which are viewed by children.

Another teaching aid involves a character called "Mr Yuk" who is applied to stickers which are used to educate children and adults about poisonous substances. The stickers are placed on poisonous goods and contain a poison help telephone number.

Many dangerous items are in the environment of a child. For example, a typical kitchen has sharp knives, cooking facilities which are hot when used and many other dangerous items which frequently result in injury of the child.

There is a need to improve the education of the children about potentially dangerous items.

3 Summary of the Invention In a first aspect the present invention provides a teaching aid for childhood safety education, the teaching aid comprising: a medium arranged to educate children about potentially dangerous items, the medium including a pictogram and representations that relate to the potentially dangerous items, and a symbol associated with the pictogram and arranged to be applied to potentially dangerous items to improve recognition of the potentially dangerous items.

The teaching aid typically utilises a synergistic effect of combining a the symbol positioned on the dangerous goods and education by the medium. The medium typically reinforces the message of the symbol displayed on the warning sticker. Text and graphics may be included in the medium to develop a child's ability to recognise basic items. The medium typically also aids parents or carers in their assessment of their child's ability to grasp the associated safety concepts.

The shape of the symbol may be stylised to represent the shape of a pictogram used in the medium. The shape representation is a powerful way of reinforcing a message of the medium without the symbol being necessarily an exact representation of the pictogram contained within the medium. Thus, the problem of children being attracted towards the symbol may be avoided.

The symbol may be represented on a sticker that is arranged to be applied to the potentially dangerous item.

The medium may be at least one of a television, a video, a DVD or computer-based presentation, or to a book.

4 The representations of the potentially dangerous items may also include graphics and text. For example, the graphics and the text may be on paper such as pages of a book.

Alternatively the graphics and the text may be displayed using any other medium.

If the medium is in the form of a book, one of each pair of pages may be arranged to build the visual vocabulary of the children and the other page may be arranged to stimulate children by testing their spatial skills with regard to real world object recognition.

According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of teaching childhood safety, the method comprising the steps of: educating children about potentially dangerous items using a medium, the medium including a pictogram and representations that relate to the potentially dangerous items, and applying a symbol associated with the pictogram to the potentially dangerous items to improve recognition of the potentially dangerous items.

The present invention provides in a third aspect a teaching aid for early childhood safety education comprising a symbol arranged to be applied to household items to represent a danger associated with those items, and a media including pictorial aids incorporating a pictogram, wherein the symbol is a stylised version of the pictogram and the media is arranged to help children develop recognition and knowledge of the danger of the items bearing the symbol through the pictogram.

5 Description of the Drawings Preferred embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which: Fig. 1 is a flow chart for a method embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 2 shows a first page of a book in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention, Fig. 3 shows a pictogram according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 4 shows a symbol according to a preferred embodiment of the invention, Fig. 5 shows the symbol of Fig. 4 applied to a warning sign, Fig. 6 shows a second page of the book for which the first page is shown in Fig. 2, and Fig. 7 shows a pair of pages of a book according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiments Referring initially to Fig. 1, a teaching aid and a method of childhood safety education is now described.

Fig. 1 shows the teaching aid 10 which comprises a medium 12 and a symbol 13. The medium 12 comprises linguistic and pictorial aids 14 and a pictogram 15. The symbol 13 may be applied in conjunction with formal warning signage to potentially dangerous household items or other items. The symbol 13 visualises the danger associated with the items to which it is applied.

Fig 1 shows schematically a link between the symbol 13 and the pictogram 15, which in this embodiment is a stylised version of the pictogram 15. The medium 12 is arranged to help children develop recognition and 6 knowledge of the danger of the items bearing the symbol 13 through the pictogram 15. In the illustrated form, the medium 12 is a book, but could be any other form of medium including a television, video, dvd, or computer based presentation.

The book 12 reinforces the message of the symbol 13 by developing a child's ability to recognise potentially dangerous items and associate the danger with the pictogram 15 and the symbol 13. Specific examples of the linguistic and pictorial aids 14 are shown in Fig. 2 which shows a number of pictures 17 of potentially dangerous items and associated text messages 18.

The medium 12 also aids parents or carers in their assessment of their child's ability to grasp the associated safety concepts. In this embodiment this is achieved through asking the children questions about the text messages 18 and the pictures 17.

Fig. 3 shows a pictogram 30 which in this embodiment is a "little monster" and Fig. 4 shows the associated symbol 40. The link between the pictogram 30 and the symbol 40 can be appreciated by examining their shapes.

Both the pictogram 30 and the symbol 40 have a substantially rounded upper part 31 and a substantially rounded lower part 32 being joined by a body 33 having four arms 34 extending therefrom. The shape representation of the symbol 40 enables reinforcing the message of the medium 12 without the symbol 40 being an exact representation of the pictogram 30 contained within the medium 12. Thus, the problem of children being attracted towards the symbol because it may show "a little monster" is avoided.

Fig. 5 shows a warning sign 50 to which the symbol is applied and Fig. 6 shows another example of a book page 7 showing a portion of the little monster 30 and a potentially dangerous item 17. In this example, the book page shown in Fig. 6 is a the second page of a pair of book pages for which the book page shown in Fig. 1 is the first one.

In use the teaching aid 10 may be implemented in stages. In a first stage, the teaching aid 10 centres around the book 12. Using rhyme and repetition along with bright graphics of concrete objects, partial objects and perspectives, the book may be used to develop a child's abilities to recognise a potentially dangerous item. At this stage, the main pictogram (the "little monsters" is introduced and stresses two basic responses to danger, that being "keep 5 steps away" and "ask Mummy and Daddy if it is ok".

The book 12 is also designed at this stage to aid parents and carers in their assessment of a child's ability to grasp the basic safety concept. In particular: can the child recognise the items in two dimensions and in perspective? can the child ask and answer questions about the book? can the child remember parts of the rhyme? can the child tell the story of the book? These are some of the question which will help the parent determine how vulnerable their child is to injury.

In this embodiment the book aims to search for a level in a child's learning that comes before their ability to read and write and at which the children have an ability to understand the danger.

The second stage of the teaching aid bundles all the concepts for safety and presents it to the child through one universal symbol, the "little monster" 30 or "double key" 40 as represented in Figures 3 and 4. As mentioned 8 above, the symbol 40 is used as opposed to the pictogram to ensure that a child who has not learnt the concept or is not yet at a developmental stage to understand it, will not be attracted to it any more than to text or or any other graphics on typical packaging.

If the child is developmentally ready to understand the danger but is not able to read the book, the child can still be taught the concept by parents and carers using the medium 12.

Because in this embodiment the symbol 40 is a symbol and does not contain any letters, there is no language barrier and as such, the symbol 40 can be adopted universally. This stage builds upon a child's basic knowledge developed in the first stage in conjunction with the book 12. The symbol 40 echoes the description of the pictogram 30 in the book 12 which helps to reinforce and support the memory of the safety concept. Ideally, the symbol 40 would appear across a broad range of items from pharmaceuticals to cleaning agents and insect sprays, even on such things as match boxes and cups used to hold hot drinks.

Accordingly, the teaching aid 10 provides children a context for learning about safety issues and also provides carers the opportunity to reinforce that knowledge and to also assess children under their care.

Fig. 7 shows a further embodiment of the present invention. The Fig. shows two pages 70 and 71 of a book.

In this embodiment, the illustration on the pages includes text messages 72 that include directions for parents to reduce the potential danger associated with the items shown in pictures 17. For example the picture 17 showing a knife may have the illustration 72 "knives should be stored in high drawers at the rear". Consequently, parents 9 may learn with their children when using the book what could be done to reduce the danger associated with the items 17.

Although the invention has been described with reference to particular examples, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the invention may be embodied in many other forms. For example, the symbol or the pictogram 30 may take any suitable form. The symbol and the pictogram 30 may also be of identical shape.

Claims (12)

1. A teaching aid for childhood safety education, the teaching aid comprising: a medium arranged to educate children about potentially dangerous items, the medium including a pictogram and representations that relate to the potentially dangerous items, and a symbol associated with the pictogram and arranged to be applied to potentially dangerous items to improve recognition of the potentially dangerous items.

2. The teaching aid as claimed in claim 1 wherein the items are household items.

3. The teaching aid as claimed in claim 1 or 2 wherein the symbol is represented on a sticker that is arranged to be applied to the potentially dangerous item.

4. The teaching aid as claimed in any one of the preceding claims wherein the shape of the symbol is stylised to represent the shape of the pictogram.

5. The teaching aid as claimed in any one of the preceding claims wherein the medium includes text.

6. The teaching aid as claimed in any one of the preceding claims, wherein the medium is at least one of to a television, video, DVD, or computer based presentation.

7. The teaching aid as claimed in any one of claims 1 to wherein the medium includes text and graphics. M II

8. The teaching aid as claimed in claim 7 wherein the representations of the potentially dangerous items include drawings in a book.

9. A method of teaching childhood safety, the method comprising the steps of: educating children about potentially dangerous items using a medium, the medium including a pictogram and representations that relate to the potentially dangerous items, and applying a symbol associated with the pictogram to the potentially dangerous items to improve recognition of the potentially dangerous items.

10. A teaching aid for early childhood safety education comprising a symbol arranged to be applied to household items to represent a danger associated with those items, and a media including pictorial aids incorporating a pictogram, wherein the symbol is a stylised version of the pictogram and the media is arranged to help children develop recognition and knowledge of the danger of the items bearing the symbol through the pictogram.

11. A teaching aid substantially as herein described with reference to the drawings.

12. A method substantially as herein described with reference to the drawings. Dated this 18th day of May 2004 SIMON WONG By his Patent Attorneys GRIFFITH HACK