Last Updated on July 5, 2025 by Editorial Team
A picture is worth a thousand words, how often have you found this to be true? Can you identify if a person is happy, sad, or annoyed just by looking at a picture? A picture can give you so much information without the need for even a single word. Signs and symbols are great tools to circulate information non-verbally. Some signs and symbols are also universal in nature, and some have cultural variations.
One such area is related to transport. Traffic signs and symbols are used as a way to communicate the rules and restrictions for the driver, rider, passenger, or while walking. These signs and symbols help in promoting safety and congestion-free travel. While traffic rules and road safety is an important concepts, students might not be fully aware of them.
So, games and activities are helpful ways to promote knowledge and awareness. Games and activities help create a fun learning environment while also teaching significant concepts. Check the below-mentioned activities and games to create a diversified learning platform for students.
Interesting activities to teach signs and symbols
Activities can help in grasping the attention of all students and help in bringing them together. Through activities, a lot of knowledge can be imparted in an interactive manner which promotes involvement.
1. Scavenger Hunt
The scavenger hunt is a game that ignites the explorer within all of us. The scavenger hunt can be one of the activities through which students can learn a lot about traffic signs and symbols.
- Give students a worksheet on which different types of traffic signs and symbols are given
- Give them the time of one day or two
- During this time, they need to find the mentioned traffic signs and symbols in their neighborhood
- They have to write the name of the sign, what it means, and where they found it
Such an activity helps students learn a lot through experience. They also understand how certain signs and symbols are common in one place. For example, a no-honking or no-parking area will be common in hospital and residential areas.
2. Here I am Ma’am
This is a fun interactive activity and helps in involving students to learn what are the different types of signs and symbols and what exactly each one means.
- Give students different signs and symbols made on a paper
- Ask them to make and stand in a circle and simply keep walking in a circle
- Give instruction by saying ‘Stop’, or ‘No Parking’, or ‘No Honking’, one at a time
- When this instruction or name of the sign is called out, two students having the flashcard is supposed to come out and show it to all their classmates
This activity will help students to learn the meaning and representation of different types of signs and symbols effectively.
3. Be The Sign
Have you ever engaged your child or student in an activity or game that can boost their creativity, and teach them about other concepts too? Well, this activity is a creative activity that can help students learn and remember the information through experience and involvement.
- Students have to make art and play the role of a traffic sign or a symbol
- They can use various creative ways to do that, like clay, craft paper, drawing, or any other artistic method
- After this, they have to speak about the sign, usage, purpose, and where it is generally found
Through this activity, students will be able to channelize their artistic creativity and fuse it with their academic knowledge. This activity will help in storing the information regarding signs and symbols in an emphasized manner.
4. Find Your Match
This activity focuses on bringing the whole class together. Through this activity, students get to learn the meaning and the representation of the signs and symbols in a playful and creative manner.
- Make a group of 10 students facing each other
- One group will get flashcards of the names of signs or symbols
- The other group will get the illustrations of the sign or symbol
- After the cards are distributed, simply call out the name of any sign/symbol, for example, Speed Limit 30
- The student who has the name of the card and the other student with the symbol of the card should then show their cards and make a pair
Hence, amongst other critical thinking games and activities, this too is an innovative activity that promotes critical thinking and promptness in responding. Other students also get an opportunity to learn through visually appealing clues.
5. Draw What You See
This activity helps students pay more attention to their surroundings. It also helps them understand and question why certain signs and symbols are always present in certain areas.
- Encourage students to go to a mall and a garden
- Give them the time of 1 week
- Students have to make a note and draw all the traffic signs and symbols they see when they go to a mall or a garden
- Invite an open discussion and hear their findings
This activity helps students explore and learn through experience. They realize the importance of certain signs and understand how specific signs are always present in specific areas.
Fun and engaging signs and symbols games
Games are a fun way to learn anything. Games are a great way to learn in a manner that helps students remember the information for a longer period of time. Check a few games that help in introducing students to various traffic signs and symbols.
1. Stop, Walk, Run
This game is an interactive game in which students have to be alert and pay attention to their teachers.
- In this game, prepare 3 circle flashcards and color them red, yellow, and green
- Students have to stand in a horizontal line
- Play the music and let them dance
- Show a flashcard when the music stops
- If it’s red, students have to stop
- If it’s yellow, they have to dance slowly
- If it’s green, students have to run in their lanes
- The student who fails in following the instruction loses
This game is a simple interactive game that can help students in learning about the different colors and their meanings regarding traffic signals. Through this game, the tendency to stop, get ready, or go will naturally get encoded in their minds.
2. Mega Quiz
A quiz is a type of game that is engaging and informative. This type of game helps players as well as the audience learn a lot of things. Through this game, information is encoded and stored vividly in the minds of the players.
- Prepare a list of many questions
- Divide the class either into teams of 3 each
- Keep sections of the quiz in which there will be images, signs, and symbols related to traffic shown as visual cues
- The student who answers most questions correctly wins
Learning through the help of a quiz can give a break for students from everyday lectures. It can help in refreshing their mind. The quiz can help in learning objective knowledge quickly which can help students in various ways.
3. Puzzling Through Traffic
Puzzles are always fun, challenging, and often time-consuming. They are engaging and an interesting way to learn a set of new things.
- Divide the class into a set of teams
- Make a set of DIY puzzles on road safety, traffic rules, traffic signs, or symbols using cardboard
- Draw different signs or print these signs and stick them on cardboard
- Now, draw the pattern of the puzzle and cut it, just like a DIY number puzzle
- Students have to complete the puzzle first and then speak a few lines about the same
- The team who completes it first and speaks creatively wins
This game engages students in learning through involvement. Puzzles demand a lot of focus and concentration. Through this game, students also learn teamwork and coordination in a team.
4. Just a Minute
Just a minute is a game that demands one’s complete attention, focus, and involvement. It is a game that helps students experience working and doing something under pressure.
- Give students a sheet of paper
- Print 10-15 questions on traffic signs and symbols
- These questions will be multiple choice questions and they will be given 1 minute
- Students have to solve as many questions correctly as possible in one minute
- The student who solves the most questions correctly in one minute wins
This game can create an environment of healthy competition in the class. It can help students in applying the knowledge that they have learned regarding signs and symbols under pressure. Just a minute is a game that comes under the criteria of speed testing.
5. My Artistic Art
Drawing and painting are creative ways to indulge students in different kinds of learning. This is a time-based game and should be done quickly.
- For this game, all students should have multiple sheets of paper
- Quickly announce any symbol and let students draw or paint it quickly
- After this, keep the time for 2 minutes and let students play who complete it within the time
- Similarly, keep announcing different names and every time a student who is last is out of the game
- The students to paint/draw all signs/symbols quickly wins the game
Though it is a time-consuming game, students learn a lot of signs and symbols with respect to their colors, shapes, and basic features. They also get an opportunity to sharpen their memory and build better recall capabilities.
Wrapping up
It is important to learn about traffic signs and symbols. Having knowledge about them through games and activities helps students understand the importance of traffic rules and regulations and how their absence can lead to chaos and accidents. This knowledge helps students in becoming responsible drivers and passengers. It also contributes to helping them become good and dutiful citizens of the nation. So, it is an innovative way to include such unique games and activities to teach traffic-related concepts and promote road safety.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,