With all the hand washing advice about at the moment, we decided to do some hand washing of our own. We have one boy that is taking hand washing very seriously, and is waking up in the night to do extra hand washing. We have another that alternates between doing very thorough hand washes and skipping them completely. We needed them to find a middle ground.

Resources

  • Rubber gloves
  • Whiteboard pen
  • Bowl of warm water
  • Bars of hand soap
  • Liquid soap
  • Nail brush

Method

One of the best ways to prevent the spread of infections is to clean your hands.

Even if they look clean, your hands can still carry many germs. That’s why cleaning hands regularly is so important.

We made some ‘hands’ by inflating two rubber gloves. The boys drew some ‘germs’ on the hands using a whiteboard pen.

Ioan went first. He wet his glove, then rubbed the bar of soap on the ‘germs’, until it got rid of them. He rubbed the palms, the back of the hand, between the fingers, the fingertips, thumbs and wrists and the nails.

Finn went next. He used the liquid soap and made sure to give a big scrub of the nails with the nail brush.

Now that their hands were clean, they were safe to ‘High 5’.

The advice give on the NHS website:

  1. Wet your hands under warm running water.
  2. Apply a small amount of liquid soap.
  3. Rub your hands together vigorously. Make sure you apply soap and water to all surfaces of your hands for at least 15 seconds and up to one minute. Make sure you rub your palms, the backs of your hands, between your fingers, your fingertips, thumbs and wrists and your nails.
  4. Rinse your hands under running water.
  5. Dry your hands thoroughly using disposable paper towels.
  6. Turn the tap off using the paper towel or your elbow, to avoid recontaminating your hands.