Home Safety PowerPoint Presentation

From LoveToKnow Safety

A home safety PowerPoint presentation is a great way to get families talking about and thinking about safety issues. From house fires to basic safety rules every home needs a plan and PowerPoint can make this plan easy.

Necessary Supplies

Owning your own computer is useful. Having a tech savvy buddy or two will help as well. Also, there are also some other supplies you will need to make a useful home safety PowerPoint presentation.

List Your Family Safety Topics

The first task is to make a list of all the different topics you’d like to cover in your presentation. Each family is different. If you have a baby or toddler in the house you might want to include ideas such as choking hazards and cords on the floor. With older kids, safety issues change. For instance, not leaving a bike where someone can trip over it or knowing a good escape route in case of fire.

You can make a chart and log all of your ideas down. It helps to make categories that relate to either specific rooms or specific dangers. For instance you could log, "Fire" which is a specific danger and under "Fire" make notes about which fire safety topics to cover; extinguishers, baking soda, stop-drop-roll, and more. You can make lists for safety by the room because you can sit in the room and look around for dangers as you make your list.

Here’s an example of a basic idea chart for a home safety PowerPoint presentation. In this example list the main categories are "rooms in a house."

**Safety Topic Idea List**
Kitchen Safety	Whole House Safety	Bathroom Safety
Hot stoves	Broken steps	Slippery floors
Knives	Outlets	Electricity and water
Chemicals	Power loss	Hazardous cosmetics
Choking	Earthquakes	Cabinet safety locks

These are some ideas but only a starting point. There are many different kinds of safety topics your presentation can and should cover. For additional ideas about what to include in your presentation take a look at these articles: Electrical Safety Tips at Home, MySpace Safety, or The Home Safety Council.

Spice Up Your Home Safety PowerPoint Presentation

To make it interesting you're going to want to include pictures. Images in a presentation are not necessary but do have the following benefits:

Small children who can't read yet will be able to learn from the presentation.
Interesting graphics keep everyone interested.
Graphics used for training help people to remember facts better than text alone.
Illustrations will often showcase an important point, such as which part of the fire extinguisher to pull or what a poison sticker looks like.

There are many places to get good free images for your presentation.

Home computers usually come with free clip art so check there first. You can even have your kids draw pictures and then scan them into your computer to use. This is a cool way to personalize your presentation. Other places to find free clip art include:

Fire Safety Education Clip Art
Microsoft.com
Artisan training productions
- If you'd like to go all out and buy professional PowerPoint safety pictures you can do that as well at presentationpictures.com.

Creating Your Presentation

Many families have home computers with PowerPoint capabilities. Check out this page from Microsoft if you need more information about:

Purchasing PowerPoint for your home.
Using PowerPoint on your home computer, including quick tutorials.
Updates for your current PowerPoint program.

The best tip about organizing your presentation is that there is no best way. Since every family is different you can organize slides according to your family's needs. If you have a current dilemma, like a child who needs some reminding about playing in the driveway or keeping away from a hot stove then start with that as your initial safety subject. You can create 10 slides that discuss kitchen safety and than five about yard and driveway safety -- it's up to you.

Additionally, color coding for small children works well. If you have two children and they need reminders about different specific safety topics you can color code a set of green slides for one child and a set of blue for another. Also, try out different backgrounds. Add music and graphics; anything that will keep the family engaged as they learn.

To get an idea of some basic but well designed home safety slides take a look at this site from the Office of Environmental Safety at Indiana State University.

Using Your Presentation

Whew, all that work to create the perfect presentation and your spouse is busy and the kids want to play outside, but don't let all that hard work go to waste. A safety presentation only works if your family watches it and learns from it. So, try these tips:

Set aside a specific time every few months to go over the presentation with each member of the family.
Sit with only one child at a time at the computer.
Let your child be in control of the mouse.
Read the slides aloud and discuss the safety images with a younger child.
Let an older child read aloud, or if he prefers, by himself, and have him explain the safety topics back to you.
If your spouse or other adult in your home is reluctant to go over the presentation try to appeal to their logical side. Start a conversation with how important it is to you and the family.

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