GERMY HAND WASHING EXPERIMENT

With baby just around the corner, I’ve been teaching the kids about the importance of keeping their germy little fingers as clean as possible! I have been trying to get them to understand that whilst they have strong little immune systems and can fight off bugs that they catch from kindy and school really easily, their new tiny baby brother or sister won’t have that same strength and could get really sick from them sharing their germs around.

Washing hands is a biggie that we have been working on. For some reason as they get older they seem to forget these basic skills which you drill into them at a young age. Arden who is 4 will ALWAYS wash his hands with soap after he has been to the loo and I often catch him voluntarily washing them throughout the day (clearly still a novelty). Whereas Kylan who is 9 is just getting lazier as he grows up and I often catch him just giving his fingers a quick wee rinse with water, if anything at all!

When Dettol approached me about their new Healthy Habits Schools Programme that they were rolling out throughout primary schools in New Zealand and how they would like us to try out some of their experiments over the school holidays, I thought it was perfect timing to jump on board and help teach the boys about germs!

So this is one of the experiments we did! It showed the boys how water alone won’t clean away all of the germs that usually we can’t see with our naked eyes.

They had so much fun doing it and seeing the results helped them understand what I have been trying to tell them!

DETTOL GERMY HAND WASHING EXPERIMENT

WHAT YOU NEED:

• Cold water
• Oil
• Cinnamon
• Dettol Hand wash
• Warm Water

HOW TO DO IT:

Get your child to cover their hands in oil, then cover them in cinnamon. The cinnamon will represent the germs in the experiment.

Now that their hands are all germy, get them to try wash away the germs using only cold water.

They will see that cold water alone will not remove all the germs!

Now get them to wash their hands using the Dettol hand wash and warm water.

VOILA! NO MORE GERMS!

They also had fun doing some of the other lessons like drawing their own germs and seeing where the germs can be found all over the house…Arden thought it was hilarious that there was a picture of someone picking their nose, I explained that those are germs too however so far this lesson hasn’t stopped his fascination with digging for diamonds.

The kids enjoyed doing their science experiment which not only kept them entertained for a wee while but it got their brains thinking, which in turn led to more play around germs afterwards. There are plenty more experiments available to do from the Dettol Healthy Habits Schools Programme which you can download here including cultivating germs and bacteria which is next up on our list…Kylan LOVES science so this is right up his alley!

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and a big thank you to Dettol for sponsoring this blog post and experiment!