Red Light, Green Light, GO, GO, GO!

I don’t know about you, but my children always seem to be on the go! Run, Run, Run! All throughout the house, over and over and over. I yell, “Stop running!” but they don’t seem to listen or care. The fun ends when someone falls down or runs into something and I shake my head, didn’t they learn from last time? But of course not, they are children who have the wonderful life of being just that, children.

I know how interesting traffic lights and driving in general is for the kids, so I put together the Stop, Go game to see if it would help in my home. Thankfully, it slowed them down…for a little bit. We still all ended up having a blast of fun! Maybe I should work on those listening skills instead 🙂

Materials:

• Two large pieces of constructions paper (to make lights on)
• Bowl to draw lights
• Red, yellow and green construction paper
• Five paper plates
• Two popsicle sticks
• Red, yellow and green crayons

1. Draw a traffic light by tracing the outline of a bowl on both pieces of construction paper

I hung these pictures on the wall the night prior to get them excited for our traffic light craft day when they woke up. It was their push to get dressed and ready to play!

2.  Color three papers plates: one red, one yellow and one green. Set red, yellow and green construction paper next to them.

3. Explain that they are going to tear each paper and put on the designated plate for its color

4. Ask them to tape (or glue, whatever works for your child. Double sided tape is nice) each color onto the correct light

Here I explained how each color has a purpose. Ex: Red = Stop Yellow = Slow Green = Go. We talked about lights and driving.

GAME TIME!

5. With the second traffic light, we played a game. I brought out the crayons and asked for them to color in each light.

My daughter is almost two (22 months) and just wanted to color but my three-year old son got the point.

6. Cut out each light or have your child do it if they can handle scissors properly

7. Tape or glue each light onto a paper plate

8. Tape a popsicle stick and you have a traffic sign.

I wrote STOP and GO so they could see the words and start to make a correlation between the word and action

They had a blast!

Even my daughter loved to yell STOP! and would fall down!

I started off by saying, “Go!” and then followed by “Stop!” but they seemed to take over and kept themselves having fun for almost an hour! Then throughout the day, I would grab a sign and shout out directions. They almost always (ha ha) seemed to listen 🙂