UNITED STATES COAST GUARD AUXILIARY
OPERATION BOAT SMART
BOAT SMART KIDS
Safe Boating Programs For Your Local Schools
Use this format only if you are comfortable with interactive discussions with children. If you use this format, you will probably want to ask a leading question for each page of the booklet, then use the answer or answers that the children give as part of a discussion about that particular concept.
In general, each separate page is one concept. However, equipment you should carry can be treated together with life jackets and distress signals as one concept. The available time frame will dictate how many concepts can be treated at one presentation.
(Jim DiPelesi teaching boat Smart Kids)
The pictures in the student workbook have been designed so that you or students can make overhead transparencies of them for use in a classroom.
PowerPoint presentations are also available. You can fill in information on the transparencies either with your children during the presentation or ahead of time.
Children of this age love to help make notes or add information to transparencies! This will help pace the lesson so that students can make similar notes in their own books.
(Dick Birgler and Skip Mumford teaching Boat Smart Kids)
An interesting, student involved, way to present this material is to assign different concepts to different groups of students.
We suggest 2-4 in a group, ideal is probably three. Either the group can make up a story that they act out or tell in order to illustrate the point, or they can use the pictures to give a “speech” together…or they can even make up a song to some familiar tune!
Assignments to the groups might be made as follows:
A. Parts of a boat and equipment you must carry to be legal; Pages 2,4,5
B. All about personal flotation devices, picture 5 and examples which students bring to class; page 3
C. Swimming, boating, alcohol and cold water; Pages 10,11,12
D. Lights on boats and what they mean; Page 6
E. Personal Watercraft-how are they different from other boats; Page 7 and some “special research” by the students
F. Give-way vs. Stand-on, rules of the road for boats; Page 8.
G. The meaning of red and green buoys, as well as orange marked ones; Page 9
Sometimes a class contains students who are gifted and complete their work ahead of time. Such students can be given the book and asked to learn the material in it. They can do the crossword puzzle in the book under your supervision to gain extra points in the class.
Demonstrations and Activities:
A. A small plastic boat floating in a dishpan of water would enable children to place ˝ ounce (fishing) weights so as to illustrate a balanced or unbalanced boat.
B. Try on real life jackets, some of which fit and some of which do not, and discuss how they should fit.
C. Divide class into teams, give each a life jacket and, one by one, children don jackets, run across the room, return to team and pass it to the next person to do the same; repeat until all members have had a turn.D. A glass fish aquarium with water of temperature 45-65o, children immerse arms to elbows for 90 seconds (timed) and then try to pick up a dime from the bottom of the aquarium.
E. Three flashlights, one with red tissue, one with green tissue and one with no tissue...to illustrate sidelights and masthead light, hold color lights in hands and place white light on head. With lights out, let them see what can be seen from various directions.F. Number students with odd and even numbers. Have them stand so as to make a “channel” of odd or even numbered buoys and send other children (who are boats) through the channel.
G. Put children into pairs. Define various situations and have the children say who is stand-on and who is give-way, based on their relative positions. For added fun, have them use sound signals (one-short, give-way leaves stand- on to port side of self; two shorts, give-way boat leaves stand-on to starboard)
Information and sample lesson plans are provided for various age groups as follows:
Boat Smart Kids Instructors Guide
Boat Smart Kids Public Information Page
www.ratlines.com
Revised: 12/18/07