Canyon kids learn about farm safety

Farm safety at Canyon School with Doemonica Fedoruk
T. Lucas photos

Toni Lucas, Pincher Creek Voice

Children at Canyon School learned more about farm safety this week from Doemonica Fedoruk, one of seven teachers from the Alberta Farm Safety Centre located in Raymond, Alberta.  Fedoruk went from classroom to classroom using activity books, toys, photos, puppets, and a movie to help get across her message of safety to the children.


She read the kids a book about two children visiting their grandfathers farm.  In the story the children left a safe place on the farm and went exploring around the heavy equipment.  Disaster strikes, threatening newborn kittens.  The kids listening to the story easily understood that the kids in the book should not have left the safe zone without their grandfather's permission, and that they should not have been playing with the dangerous equipment.  Luckily, the kittens emerged unscathed.

Kindergarten class learns during play

Fedoruk visits about 125 schools a year and helps kids learn about safety around grain (it takes between 3 and 6 seconds to drown in grain), equipment, animals, quads and ice. She's been making farm safety presentations for nine years. She stresses the use of safe places and asking an adult to go to other areas.  "This is an everybody rule, even grown-ups.  You ask, and let people know when you leave a safe space,"  she said.  She also told the kids about the buddy system.

"The chances are that most of these kids live on or are going to visit a farm, and the kids that live on one are in the unique position of living where work is taking place," said Fedoruk.

Related link:   http://abfarmsafety.com