36 VBS traffic control tips!
- Have the local police department supply off-duty policemen with arm bands.
- Have parents join the children for Worship Rally at the end. Parents are already in the building when time to go home.
- Enlist some men or older youth to be parking attendants.
- To smoothly move rotations, schedule the time down to specific, not general, times (i.e. – at 6:41 p.m., 1st grade goes to music, at 6:42 p.m. 2nd grade goes to recreation, etc.)
- Use separate entrances for preschool, children and VBX.
- Be sure to schedule rotation rooms close together to eliminate long walks.
- Place a person with a walkie-talkie at each street entrance.
- Offset schedules so preschool, children and preteens are not all in the hallways at the same time.
- Appoint guides to accompany kids to ever rotation. Provide special signs for them to hold for their group.
- Have senior adults help open doors and greet children and parents.
- Ask the youth and college/career members to serve as escorts and help kids rotate.
- Use the local fire department to park cars. They bring their trucks for the kids to explore and they pass out fire safety materials, fire hats and stickers.
- Use ropes for preschoolers to travel through hallways.
- Designate a drop-off and pick-up area for parents in cars.
- Allow transition time in schedules.
- Designate traffic flow one-way in and one way out. Create traffic patterns in hallways that don’t collide.
- Mark hallway floors with lines. Yellow down the middle, green arrows on one side and red arrows down the other.
- If going upstairs, use one set of stairs. If coming downstairs, use another set of stairs.
- Rotate each age division within their own areas.
- When rotating preschoolers, have them act out an animal (hop like a kangaroo, etc.) to get from place to place.
- For dismissal, have the children that ride buses dismissed to the sanctuary before children that came with parents. They are given a colored bracelet that represent their bus.
- Have an older couple manage the schedule by ringing a bell to change rotations.
- If parents are going to pick-up children from their classrooms, provide the parents with a map of the facility.
- Signs, signs, signs. You can never use too many signs for information or directions.
- Dismiss from Worship Rally in groups.
- Organize the different areas in a circular route, so that the groups don’t meet in the hallways.
- Use local parking lots with additional parking spaces for buses.
- As children arrive and register, they are assigned a color based on age. They line up behind same color traffic cones and take refreshments by that color
- Rotate clockwise through hallways.
- If possible, use rooms with two doors. Enter through one door and exit the other.
- If using a carpooling line for pick-up, provide parents with color coded placards with the child’s name. Have the parent place the placard on the dashboard of the car as they arrive for pick-up.
- Use a crossing guard.
- Use road signs (i.e.- one way, do not enter, etc.) in the hallways.
- Use an air horn to signify rotation times.
- Offer parents a cool drink while waiting to pick up their children.
- Ask the deacons to direct the parking.
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