How to Teach Young Children to Wash Their Hands

Any elementary school teacher can tell you that young children are adorably packaged germ transporters, touching community toys, pencils and desks with the same hands used to wipe their noses and bite their fingernails. According to the Center for Disease Control, sick children miss a combined total of 22 million school days each year. Not surprisingly, children who practice good hygiene miss fewer days than their non-hand-washing peers.

Things You'll Need

• Anti-bacterial soap
• Paper towels

Show More

Instructions

• 1

  Explain the premise of hand washing to elementary-age children. The practice will have more meaning if children understand the basic rationale. Explain that when someone sneezes or coughs and then touches a toy or doorknob, the next child to touch that doorknob is also touching their germs. As a fun exercise, slather certain toys or doorknobs with black-light activated ink throughout the day. At the end of the day, turn on a black-light so the students can see how quickly invisible germs spread.

• 2

  Demonstrate how to wash your hands correctly. Turn on the hot water and wet hands. Squirt one pump of antibacterial soap into your palm. Clearly outlining the necessary amount of soap is important with young children; otherwise they'll pump half the bottle into their hands before lunchtime.

• 3

  Instruct the children to vigorously scrub their hands together. Encourage scrubbing among younger children by telling them the soap has magic bubbles that only appear if your scrub your hands really well. Show them how to scrub between their fingers as well by intertwining their fingers together and apart several times. Sing happy birthday twice while scrubbing to satisfy the 30-second time requirement needed to kill bacteria.

• 4

  Show the children how to dry their hands using clean paper towels. Demonstrate how one or two paper towels are sufficient to avoid overzealous towel unraveling. Point out where all the trashcans are located and tell children to throw their towels away after drying their hands.

• 5

  Have each child demonstrate washing his hands throughout the day and reward him with a gold star for being a "Germ Stopper."