Streetwise: Thurston County school teaches students about road safety

In the latest edition of Streetwise, KIRO Traffic’s Tracy Taylor talks to a Thurston County School that is teaching kids about road safety.

It’s all thanks to Parker Miller, a fifth grade student at Mountain View Elementary School in Lacey, a few grants, and help from his P.E. teacher.

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“Children are learning how to be safe on their bike and to ride on the roads out in traffic. We have a round-about, a four-way intersection, a one-way, three lanes over here,” said P.E. teacher Karen Steen. “We teach them which side of the road to bike on and we tech them how to properly signal.”

The Traffic Garden is a partnership between Safe Kids Thurston County and Intercity Transit’s Walk and Roll program.

“We picked Mountain View for two main reasons,” said Daniel King from Safe Kids. “They’ll be able to use the Traffic Garden in their P.E. classroom and because they’re willing to make the garden accessible to the community during non-school hours.”

The school says they also received a grant from State Farm Insurance for supplies, and several volunteers helped put it all together.

“Many of our fifth graders submitted designs and including even some high schoolers, and a fifth grader’s design was the one that we chose,”  said Assistant Principal Taylor Swedberg. “It seemed to be the best flow.”

“I threw it together in five minutes. My mom cut the papers out and I just taped them onto a paper,” Parker explained. “I think the Traffic Garden is a wonderful place for parents to come with their kids and learn about traffic safety and rules of the road for when they grow up and become a real driver.”

Intercity Traffic hopes more schools will jump on board with their own Traffic Garden.

You can hear Tracy Taylor several times an hour every afternoon during the Tom and Curley Show on KIRO Radio. Be sure to follow Tracy on Twitter.