There is nothing more important than good hygiene! In my class we have been speaking about good hygiene regularly for the whole beginning of the year. 

What is good hygiene then? Well this is what we came up with the kids:

• Keeping your fingers out of your mouth, nose and pants
• Keeping your hands away from someone elses face
• If you need to sneeze or cough, it should go into the bend of your elbow
• One should use a tissue and not make excavations in the nose 
• Washing your hands! Especially;
  • After using the toilet
  • Before eating

We discussed how to wash your hands and used this handy poster from the World Health Organization. 

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The kids love showing us how to scrub properly with a circular motion, washing all sides of the hands and remembering the tips of your fingers too. 

Germs Escaping Soap Experiment

To demonstrate what the soap actually does, I decided to do this surface tension experiment. It’s a great literal way to show the kids how the “germs” run away from the soap. 

I had an old 5 pepper mix at home in this cute bottle. I made some ‘germs’ out of some self-adhesive fabric paper, stuck them on the bottle and glued on some eyes. I told the kids that I had managed to catch some germs into the bottle and asked them to help me get rid of them. 

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Put water on a plate, sprinkle the ‘germ’ pepper on, dip your finger into some soap and put your finger in the water. The pepper powder ‘runs away’ from the soapy finger. 

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The kids were enchanted by this simple activity and it was delightful to see all the heureka moments happening on their faces. Boy, did we have some good hand washing happening after this experiment!

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Tips: 

I would recommend a group of 3-5 kids at a time to do this experiment. I made the mistake of trying this with the whole group (19 kids). You can sprinkle the pepper on the water two times, before the reaction of the escaping pepper no longer happens. You have to change the water, sprinkle the pepper again and then put two more soapy fingers in. 3-4 year olds lose their focus very easily, so it’s better to do this in small groups.