Hygiene Games for Children

Children need to be taught about proper hygiene from an early age. Teaching children these skills while they are young will allow them to develop proper hygiene habits, thus enabling them to keep themselves healthy for the rest of their lives. While some children might not embrace the idea of brushing their teeth or washing their hands, you can help your child learn these habits by encouraging fun activities and games to incorporate them.

Hygiene Poster

• With all of the excitement that surrounds children's daily lives, they often forget to take care of themselves. Make a hygiene chart for your child and list all of the tasks and healthy habits you want him to learn. If he is young, draw a picture of each task so that he'll be able to identify it easily. Include tasks such as combing hair, brushing teeth twice a day, washing hands and face and taking a bath. You can also use a chart to promote overall cleanliness by including activities such as picking up toys and dirty clothes. If your child responds more with rewards, turn your hygiene chart into a sticker chart by making a row for each task and a column for each day. Reward your child with a new sticker for each task completed on that day.

Germs

• To children, germs are just yucky. They have difficulty understanding what they cannot see. To illustrate what germs are, sprinkle glitter on your child's hands and allow her to play. Instruct her to go touch various surfaces and objects such as a table, doorknob or the hand of a friend. Step back and show her all the glitter that was transferred around the room. If your child still has glitter on her hands, take this opportunity to teach proper hand-washing techniques. Some children only rinse their hands for a few seconds but with excess glitter on her hands, it will take at least 30 seconds to scrub it all away. Teach your child to wash her hands for at least this amount of time to remove all the germs. Your child can also sing short songs while washing her hands. When the song is over, she is finished.

Apple Cavities

• You can teach your child about the importance of proper brushing and flossing by using two apples. The apples both represent teeth and the skin on the apple represents the enamel on the teeth. Leave one apple whole and tell your child that these are healthy teeth that are brushed and flossed daily. Take the other apple and poke holes into it to represent cavities. Explain to your child that this is an unhealthy mouth that is rarely brushed and that the food we consume eats away at his teeth like the holes in the apple. Set the apples aside and observe them for the next few days. Discuss what happens.

Good Habit or Bad Habit

• Teach children the difference between good habits and bad habits by letting your child think about the various kinds of activities and decide which are good and which are bad. On 10 individual pieces of paper, write 10 good habits such as brushing your teeth twice a day, washing your hands for 30 seconds or covering your mouth when you cough. On 10 separate individual pieces of paper, write 10 bad habits. Fold up each piece of paper and stick them all in a jar. Let your child pull a piece of paper out one at a time and tell you whether it is a good or a bad habit.

Matching Game

• You can teach your children about the different tools you use to keep yourself clean and which body part these items are used on. Take two sets of cards and on one, draw pictures of items such as a toothbrush, soap and mouthwash. On the other set, draw matching body parts such as teeth, hands and mouth. Sit at a table and flip all of the cards over so that the blank side is up. Have your child turn two cards over at a time to try to match each item to its corresponding body part.