For the classroom
The following resources are intended to help schools, teachers, students and families learn how electricity works and how to use it safely.
Free electrical safety curriculum
Each year, SMUD offers free age-appropriate electrical safety booklets to be used in the classroom. These booklets serve a variety of learners through interactive games, experiments, articles, stories, and fun facts. If you have not received your order form, please visit the ordering site.
Louie the Lightning Bug 4th Grade Electrical Safety Program.
SMUD's "Louie the Lightning Bug 4th Grade Electrical Safety Activity Kit" provides resources for teachers to present lessons easily about electrical safety. (Available only to fourth-grade teachers at schools within the SMUD service area.)
In addition to an entertaining 11-minute electrical safety video featuring Louie the Lightning Bug, the kit includes reproducible materials for classroom activities, lesson plans, pre- and post-lesson test questions, California content-based standards applications and rubrics, sample letter to parents or caregivers, and discussion posters. Kits are reusable from year to year. Information goes beyond safety rules and also teaches basic concepts related to electricity, electrical generation, distribution and renewable energy.
Included is Louie's Lab, an electricity and magnetism CD, which has material organized into four levels: 1) science information; 2) electrical generation and distribution; 3) safety rules; and 4) two interactive games students play as a reward for having completed the lessons. Louie's Lab is shipped on a CD and will run on either a Windows or Macintosh platform. A teacher's guide and classroom certificates are contained in PDF documents. To download curriculum, materials and view the electric safety video, click here.
Interactive topics
Check out these fun, interactive ways to learn about saving energy and using electricity safely:
- Energy Dog: Let Energy Dog teach you ways to save energy. Includes a coloring book.
- Electrical Safety World: With games, quizzes and more, there's no better way than Electrical Safety World to learn about the safe use of electricity.
Energy links
We suggest some of our favorite references as starting points for locating additional information related to electrical energy and technology.
Education contact
Email Suzette DelBono at sdelbon@smud.org
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