Water Safety
Authors: Kellyn McClure, Kevin Howard, Meagan Elliot, Monica Brown, Kelly Morea, Abigail Romage, TaMitrice Bailey, and Gabby Summerlin
Faculty Supervisor: Beverly Rowe, MSN, RN, CNE
Community Partner: FACES Prekindergarten Center
Abstract:
Our group project was directed towards teaching preschoolers at FACES; ages 3 to 5, about water and swim safety. Some of our key topics included the importance of staying safe while in and around the water to prevent incidents such as drowning, choking, and accidents. Some of the teachings we included were to encourage the child to seek swim lessons from an adult, follow rules that pertain to being around a pool, the importance of wearing life jackets, check the environment around the pool, lake, or pond before swimming, and stay seated while in a boat. Our group did an excellent job dividing up the work, we each worked on our own individual assignments and assisted each other when needed. This project impacted our group by allowing us to educate ourselves more on water safety as well as help us prepare and adapt to teaching children 3 to 5 years of age. Water safety is a very important topic to discuss with children in our community because we live in Southeast Georgia where it gets hot in the summer and many children are near water in some way, shape, or form. It is important not only for the children but the parents as well to be taught water safety. The relationship between the project and our Service- Learning Outcomes is that we were involved in civic learning by providing a video, booklet, and poster to educate the community on water safety. We also used academic enhancement by coming together and coming up with ideas for the project, collaborating dates and times to meet and work together on the project. We also had personal growth, and this was achieved by expanding our knowledge about water safety and being willing to learn water safety and able to teach it the community. Some future implications I see our project contributing to is showing our video to preschoolers and their parents, booklets being given to children around summertime to help encourage them and get them to think about water safety.
