Lab Safety Activities for Elementary

Educating elementary students about ways to stay safe during lab is an integral part of managing your classroom. Students who are not privy to safety rules risk accidentally injuring themselves or others, but you can minimize their exposure to hazards by turning educational safety lessons into fun activities. Make sure to conduct safety activities before allowing students to enter the lab, and provide students with refresher tips throughout the course of the school year.

Personal Protective Equipment Match

• Many of the activities that teachers and students do in lab warrant the need for personal protective equipment, such as gloves, goggles or a lab coat. Give students a lesson about when to wear personal protective equipment, and which ones should be worn. For instance, working with chemicals always requires goggles and gloves to be worn, but dissecting a worm does not mean students must wear goggles (just gloves). After the lesson, provide students with a personal protective equipment match game. On a worksheet, create one column of lab activities (such as an image that represents "chemicals") and another column of personal protective equipment images. Students will connect the equipment to the appropriately matched activity on the worksheet.

Little Safety Teachers

• In this activity, elementary students will be responsible for teaching the class one important lab safety rule. Split the class up into small teams and assign each team one lab safety rule, such as "Never run in lab." Provide groups with poster board, magazines, scissors and glue. The teams will create a safety collage using images they cut from the magazine. Students should look for magazine pictures that pertain to their assigned safety rule. For instance, for a "Never run in lab" safety rule, students may cut out pictures of people running. When the poster boards are finished, each team will present the lesson and their visual aid to the class.

If-Then Flash Cards

• Flash cards are an effective way to quiz students on their knowledge of important lab safety lessons. Turn this activity into a competition by splitting the class up into two large teams. Team A will receive a flash card question first. The question is an "if" question, such as "If a fire breaks out in lab." The students on Team A will have to shout out the "then" answer to the flash card question, such as "then immediately exit the lab." Give each team one point for answering correctly, and the team with the highest score wins.

Spot the Hazard

• Spot the Hazard is a game that students play on individual worksheets, giving them practice spotting dangerous lab hazards. Each student will receive a worksheet with a scene of a school lab. On the image are lots of hazards, so instruct students to circle all of the hazards that they find. See if students can find them all.