A Sneak Preview

The Home Safety Council’s The Great Safety Adventure®, sponsored by Lowe’s, is an interactive, educational exhibit designed to teach children and families across the nation how to find and fix home safety dangers. Now in its tenth year on the road, the award-winning “field trip on wheels” has reached more than one million children and family members with valuable home safety lessons.

The exhibit unfolds from a semi-tractor trailer to form a nearly 1,000 square foot replica of a home, complete with a 20-foot entranceway, living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. There is also a giant “window” where the kids can look out to the backyard. Once inside, the exhibit teaches valuable home safety lessons related to the five leading causes of home injury: (1) falls; (2) poisoning; (3) fires and burns; (4) choking and suffocation and (5) drowning.

If families miss The Great Safety Adventure during its trip through their home town, they can visit the exhibit online to learn about home safety at: www.homesafetycouncil.org and www.coderedrover.org.

So, what happens in each room?

Living Room

• Visitors enter the exhibit through the giant 20-foot doorway and gather in the living room to watch an animated orientation video featuring the Home Safety Council’s mascot - Rover, the Home Safety Hound. The video teaches the children about common dangers found in the living room and what to do when they spot them – both in the exhibit and back at home.
• After watching the video, the children become “safety rangers-in-training” and are given flashlights. When they spot a danger, the children are encouraged to shine their flashlights on the danger and recite the key phrase “Code Red Rover, Grown-Up Come Over!” reinforcing the importance of getting the help of an adult to correct home safety dangers. With help from the adult “Safety Ranger” tour guide, the dangers are made to magically disappear after the children spot and shine their flashlights on them.

Kitchen

• The tour continues into the kitchen, where the “safety rangers-in-training” watch a video with Rover explaining the dangers of choking.
• Before leaving the kitchen, the children learn to spot common dangers that may be found under kitchen sinks, in cabinets or on the floor or stove and what they can do to prevent injuries like falls, burns and poisoning.

Backyard

• Sitting in front of a large “window”, the young “safety rangers-in-training” then watch a video of Rover demonstrating the common dangers they may encounter in their own backyard – in the pool and play areas.
• Rover also stresses the importance of wearing protective gear while riding a bike or skateboard.

Bathroom

• In the bathroom, the children learn about the common poisoning and scalding dangers they might encounter there.
• In this bathroom, with the help of the adult Safety Rangers, the kids find medicine bottles left on the countertop, bathtub water that is too hot and a hair dryer that is too close to water, but after shining their lights on the dangers – one-by-one they all disappear.

Bedroom

• The tour ends in Rover’s bedroom, where he stars in new video teaching children the importance of having working smoke alarms and planning and practicing a family fire escape plan.
• After learning valuable fire safety lessons and Rover’s fire escape plan, the smoke alarm sounds and the room fills with artificial smoke. The kids are encouraged to “Get Low and Go,” which means crawling beneath the smoke and using Rover’s fire escape plan to exit the room safely.
• The escape route leads the children outdoors where everyone gathers safely at the designated meeting place. The “safety rangers-in-training” then receive the official Safety Ranger sticker badge, The Great Safety Adventure activity book and book mark and are encouraged to share the valuable safety lessons they learned with family and friends.