Photo by Gallery DS on Unsplash
It’s great to teach and encourage children to wash their hands. The following activity is a creative way to show them why we all wash our hands! This is a fun and practical way to help children understand the importance of following all the steps to wash your hands.
What You Need:
- Bowl
- Water
- Black Pepper
- Dish Soap
Let’s Get Washing:
- Pour water into the bowl, enough to cover the bottom. It doesn’t need to be a big bowl, any safe dish for children will work.
- Allow your child to sprinkle black pepper into the water and let them know that this will represent germs. (You only need a small amount of pepper, and make sure it is out of reach until you are there to observe them sprinkle it in)
- Squirt a small amount of dish soap onto your child’s index finger and encourage them to rub it around completely so that it covers the entire tip of their finger. (Keep the soap out of reach until it’s time for them to get a little bit on their finger).
- Place soap covered finger in the middle of the bowl and observe what happens.
The Effects of Soap on Germs:
This activity will help your child to learn and understand the effect that soap has on germs and that it makes them go away. Children will understand the importance of proper health practices. Here is a book about germs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqozl-9WYgM
Cleanup Is Easy:
Simply pour water down the sink and wash bowl.
Here’s a Song That Can Help!
Photo by Maria Lin Kim on Unsplash
Songs are a great way to teach young children to wash their hands for the proper amount of time. Here is a procedure to teach recommended hand washing techniques! Wet your hands, get soap, rub soap all over hands for 20 seconds, and then rinse your hands for 10 seconds, get a paper towel to dry your hands, and then throw it away without touching the garbage can.
You could sing Happy Birthday or you could sing the song we use at Angels’ Place to scrub our hands.
Twinkle twinkle little star
look how clean my two hands are,
soap and water, scrub a dub,
get those germs off rub a dub.
Twinkle twinkle little star
look how clean my two hands are.
Once they have scrubbed their hands for 20 seconds, you can encourage your child to count to 10 or to sing “Bye bye bubbles, bye bye bubbles, bye bye bubbles wash those germs away” and then get a paper towel.