SOS 4 Kids — team review

Agenda — Friday, August 7, 2026

Everything below is live on this site right now. Every link works. This page comes down after the meeting.

The one thing to confirm today

Richard asked for a parent to be able to see the menu of choices and understand why they would pick one. Velma asked us to stop spreading ourselves across three age groups and finish the Home Alone course for 9–12 year olds first, working from her PowerPoint decks and her existing online course, updated for what children need to know in 2026.

Both are done. There is now one complete, self-certifying package for one tier, sold end to end: a parent can find it from the front page, read the offer, choose a plan, check out, land in a welcome page and start lesson one. That whole path is walked step by step in section 2 below, with links, so you can drive it yourself while we talk.

1. The sales pageWhat a parent sees. Start here. 2. The course indexAll 7 badges, 43 lesson pages. 3. The checkoutFour things to buy. Fully clickable. 4. The 2017 teardownWhat Velma’s old course contained.

1. What Richard and Velma asked for, and where it is

“As a parent, what are my menu choices and why would I pick one?”

Richard

“Our preference would be for you to complete 3–4 full modules of the Home Alone Course before you tackle the other courses. The Home Alone course is for 9–12 year olds. Focus on the content of the PowerPoint presentation — the PowerPoint really reflects what we want the kids to learn. If Fernando can refer to the existing online course and the PowerPoint, he’ll have everything he needs. He just needs to update where needed to reflect what kids need to know in 2026.”

Velma

The ask	Status	Where to see it
A parent can see the choices and understand why they’d pick one	Done	The sales page — written for the buyer, not for us. Four plans side by side, each with who it is for.
3–4 full Home Alone modules before anything else	Exceeded — all 7	The course index — 7 badges, 31 teaching lessons, 43 sequential pages, 39 quiz questions.
Aimed at 9–12 year olds	Done	Age band stated on the sales page, the course index and every badge page. Reading level and scenarios written for that band.
Built from the PowerPoint decks	Done	All 7 decks read slide by slide (196 slides, 490 media files). Every teaching point in the decks appears in the rebuild. Section 3 shows the mapping.
Built from the existing online course	Done	The 2017 teardown — six modules recovered from the Storyline packages, screen by screen, quiz by quiz. Section 4 is the before/after.
Updated for 2026	Done	New material the 2017 build never had: group chats, disappearing messages, gaming voice chat, AI chatbots, smart doorbells and delivery apps, cyberbullying as its own lesson. Section 4 lists them.
Sold end to end — a full funnel for one self-certification package	Done	Checkout → welcome page → lesson one. Walk it in section 2.
Findable by someone who lands on the site cold	Done	Front page feature band, top navigation item “Home Alone Safety” with “The course (7 badges)” underneath it, and a footer link.
Live payment through the Stripe gateway	Simulated	The checkout is fully clickable and generates a real-looking order — it just does not charge a card yet. That is a switch we throw once Richard signs off on prices.
The other two age tiers (6–9 and 11–15)	Outlined, not built	The full curriculum outline — 25 badges, 78 lessons across all three tiers. Deliberately parked, per Velma.

2. Walk the funnel — five clicks, start to finish

This is the demo. Open each link in turn. It behaves exactly as it will when the card processing is switched on.

A parent lands on the site
They see the Home Alone course featured on the front page, and “Home Alone Safety” in the top navigation. No hunting.
They read the offer
Home Alone Safety for Kids — what the child will actually be able to do, the seven badges, how certification works, the four ways to buy, the guarantee and the questions parents ask.

Note the pricing model: this is an annual membership, renewed at a discount, not a one-time lifetime purchase. A nine-year-old who starts here renews each year and moves up through the age brackets, re-certifying as they go.
They choose a plan and check out
The checkout — four things to buy: a single badge, the complete course, a family pass for up to four children, or a seat at a live community event. Switching the plan repaints the order total live. Enter a child’s first name and press pay.
They land inside
The welcome page — order reference, what they bought, what happens next, and one button into the course. Named to the child.
The child starts learning
Lesson 1.1 — The five things that keep you safe on the way home. One idea per page, a film, a written explanation, and Next at the bottom. Forty-three pages in an unbroken chain, with breadcrumbs back to the badge and the course at every step.

3. What is inside the course

Seven badges. Each badge is a set of single-idea lesson pages, then a hands-on practice page, then a badge challenge quiz the child has to pass. Passing all seven earns the Home Alone Safety certificate.

Badge	Open it	Contains	Badge challenge	Compared against
1. Street Smarts	Badge index →	4 lessons + practice + badge challenge	7 questions	2017 source teardown
2. People Safety	Badge index →	5 lessons + practice + badge challenge	5 questions	2017 source teardown
3. At Home Safety	Badge index →	6 lessons + practice + badge challenge	5 questions	2017 source teardown
4. Online Safety	Badge index →	4 lessons + practice + badge challenge	5 questions	2017 source teardown
5. Fire Safety	Badge index →	4 lessons + practice + badge challenge	6 questions	2017 source teardown
6. First Aid	Badge index →	5 lessons + practice + badge challenge	6 questions	No 2017 online module — built from the PowerPoint deck
7. Accident Prevention	Badge index →	3 lessons + practice + badge challenge	5 questions	2017 source teardown

Totals: 7 badges · 31 teaching lessons · 43 sequential lesson pages · 39 quiz questions · 6 new films shot in our own style · 4 interactive practice scenarios · 2 printable worksheets rebuilt as fill-in forms.

The films

Six short vertical films, made for phones, all featuring the same child character so the course reads as one connected story rather than a pile of clips. They are embedded in the lessons — you will see them as you walk through. Nothing was lifted out of the old PowerPoints; these are ours.

4. Before and after — Velma’s 2017 course versus the rebuild

Spencer asked for a full account of what was learned from the existing online course. Here it is. The 2017 Articulate Storyline packages were opened, unpacked and read screen by screen. Every teaching point, quiz question and feedback message was written down before a single new page was built. Those teardowns are published so you can compare directly:

SOS 4 Kids — Analysis Library (the index to all of it)
Course inventory & findings (master)
Module teardowns: 1 Street Smarts · 2 People Safety · 3 At Home Safety · 4 Online Safety · 5 Fire Safety · 7 Accident Prevention

The 2017 course, as we found it

Built in Adobe Flash. Flash has been dead since 2020 — every interactive part of the course (the Trust Meter scenarios, the chat simulation, the pop-up cards) no longer runs at all.
Almost all the words are painted into pictures. Not searchable, not translatable, not resizable, invisible to a screen reader.
Over 200 audio files and 20 videos, none of them captioned or transcribed. A deaf child cannot take this course.
Desktop-shaped. Unusable on the phone most families actually have.
Roughly 275 MB across the modules, delivered as SCORM packages that need an LMS to run.
Two modules quietly missing a quiz question — Module 2 numbers its questions Q1, Q2, Q3, Q5; Module 4 numbers them Q1–Q4, Q6.
Placeholder template text shipped to children: the At Home badge challenge contains the strings “QUESTION?”, “Answer 1” and “Answer 2” on screen next to the real question.
Draft filenames in a shipped course: “Tricky People Draft 3.mp4”. Typos on screen: “Guidlines”.

The 2026 rebuild

Plain web pages. Nothing to install, nothing that can stop working, opens on any phone, tablet or computer.
Every word is real text. Searchable, translatable, readable by assistive technology, resizes with the reader.
Every teaching point is written out in full alongside its film. Nothing important exists only in audio.
Built phone-first, in portrait, because that is how a nine-year-old will actually take it.
One page per idea, 43 pages in a chain, with breadcrumbs and Next — so progress can be tracked per child and gated by membership when we turn that on.
39 quiz questions, correctly numbered, each with feedback that explains why an answer is wrong, not just that it is.
Every teaching point from Velma’s decks carried across, plus the 2026 material listed below.

Real defects found in the old course, and what we did about them

Fixed — this one mattered

Module 2, Q2 told children who answered wrongly that they were right

The question: “It’s raining. A neighbor offers you a ride home. You text dad and he says you can go. Do you go?” The correct-answer message says “You got permission first, it’s ok to go.” The try-again message says “Nice try, but you got permission first from an adult in charge, it’s ok to go.” Both responses agree with the child. A child who got it wrong was congratulated on the substance.

In the rebuild this is taught properly in Lesson 2.3 — Your family code word and 2.4 — Gifts, secrets and adults you know: the rule is check first, and the wrong-answer feedback says what the child missed.

Fixed

Two modules are missing a quiz question and nobody noticed

Module 2 runs Q1, Q2, Q3, Q5. Module 4 runs Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q6. In both cases the missing question is not hidden or broken — it was never in the package. A planned teaching point is simply absent from each. Velma has confirmed the PowerPoint is the source of truth here, and both gaps are filled in the rebuild.

Fixed

Placeholder text shipped to children

Module 3’s badge challenge screen carries “QUESTION?”, “Answer 1” and “Answer 2” alongside the real content. Gone. The At Home Safety badge challenge is clean.

Recovered

Teaching that was in the decks but never made it into the online course

The PowerPoints contain material the 2017 online build dropped — the “five steps back” rule for answering the door being the clearest example. It is taught in the decks, it is not in the online course, and it is now in Lesson 3.6 — The door and the phone.

Kept — deliberately

Mr. Taylor

The old course runs one recurring character — a neighbor the child knows, who appears in Module 2 with an inappropriate gift, in Module 3 asking to be let in, and in Module 4 as the person on the other end of the online chat. That is genuinely good design: it teaches that the risk is usually someone known, not a stranger in a van. It is preserved and extended in the rebuild.

Kept — deliberately

The Trust Meter and the simulated chat

The two strongest pieces of teaching in the old course. The Trust Meter lives on as the practice pages (Read the person, The door and the phone). The grooming chat — which escalates from flattery to shared interest to three questions that each narrow down where the child physically is — is rebuilt as a live, playable conversation in Lesson 4.3 — Watch a conversation go wrong.

What 2026 adds that 2017 could not have known about

Velma asked for the content to reflect what children need to know now. These are the additions:

Group chats, and being added to one by someone you don’t know — Lesson 4.2
Disappearing messages, and why “it deletes itself” is not protection
Voice chat inside games, which is where most contact with strangers now happens
AI chatbots that sound like a friend
Cyberbullying as its own lesson rather than a line in a list — Lesson 4.4
Smart doorbells, camera apps and delivery drivers with a code — the modern version of “someone is at the door”
Texting a parent as the default check-in, replacing the 2017 assumption of a landline

5. What is not done, and what we need decided

Item	Who	Detail
Prices	Richard	The four prices on the checkout are placeholders that read sensibly. They need to be confirmed before anything goes live, along with the annual renewal discount.
Card processing	Us	The checkout is wired and simulated. Connecting it to the payment gateway is configuration, not construction — it follows immediately after prices are set.
A course sold twice to the same child	Richard	The existing Social Media Savvy course (ages 10–12, sold separately) and badge 4 Online Safety inside Home Alone (ages 9–12) teach the same child much the same subject. We should decide whether one absorbs the other or they are positioned differently.
Junior (6–9) and Senior (11–15)	Velma	Fully outlined, not built — parked on purpose so Home Alone could be finished properly. See the outline. Say the word and they follow the same pattern.
Senior chapter 3	Velma & Rachel	Right and wrong touching, consent, and disclosure of abuse. Drafted but held back pending your sign-off on wording. This is the one place we will not guess.
Membership gating	Us	Every lesson is its own page precisely so access can be gated per purchase and progress tracked per child. Not switched on yet — today everything is open so you can review it.
Trust Meter wording, Module 2	Velma	The explanatory text on the original Trust Meter screen is painted into artwork and could not be recovered. We wrote our own. Worth two minutes of your eyes on it.

6. Suggested running order

5 min

Walk the funnel Front page → sales page → checkout → welcome → lesson one. Section 2 above.

10 min

Velma and Rachel on the content Open two or three badges. Does this say what you want children to learn? Section 3.

5 min

Before and after The defects found in the 2017 course, and the 2026 additions. Section 4.

10 min

Richard on the commercials Prices, the renewal discount, and the Social Media Savvy overlap. Section 5.

5 min

What we build next Junior, Senior, or gating and payments first.

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