2013 TSGI Sprouts: Hand Washing and Hygiene

We have so many fun things planned this week as we continue to talk about germs and the importance of good hygiene...and of course prepare for Valentine's Day.

Ethan and Ryan enjoyed playing with all sorts of different cookie cutters in the touch and feel pool this morning. They saw letters, animals, objects like baseball bats and hockey sticks, dinosaurs, and modes of transportation like helicopters, airplanes, trains, and cars. We talked about the sounds that the different letters and animals made, and we talked about all of the different colors that we saw.

To go along with our theme about healthy hygiene, Ryan and Ethan enjoyed playing in a baby washing station. The three of us each had our own wash cloths and baby soap as I demonstrated how to wash all the dirt and germs off of our baby. We started with the baby's head, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, neck, arms, hands, legs, and don't forget those stinky feet! Then I let Ryan and Ethan go to town washing the baby by themselves. We added dishes and cups from our play kitchen as they pretended to serve their baby tea and also experimented with the water by pouring it from one cup to another and of course by splashing. I've never met a child who didn't like to play with water, and Ryan and Ethan fit right in with this category...hence the need to change into our dry clothes! Vocabulary targeted for this activity: all body parts, wash, wash cloth, soap (I need more soap please.), water, wet, cold...so many concepts to target with this activity. Feel free to carry over with this activity in your own bathtubs at home, while modeling the same vocabulary.

The snow was coming down pretty hard during our playground time, and I had already used Ryan and Ethan's extra set of dry clothes, so we decided to just briefly check on the snow's progress with a quick visit to the courtyard where we jumped, ran, marched, and tip-toed in the snow. We also tried to catch the snowflakes in our mouth with lots of success! Ethan managed to fall in the snow and get his knees quite dirty...which went perfectly with our theme of dirt and germs!

Our book today was a scholastic book called Washing Up by Melvin and Gilda Berger. This is a simple book about the importance of washing our hands after we play outside, before meals, after we use the bathroom, and after we touch our pets. It also reminds us that germs live everywhere!

After we read our book, Ryan and Ethan played with "dirt" in a big bowl (Nestle Quick cocoa powder). It was the most fragrant dirt I have ever smelled! They stirred and mixed the dirt with their hands and just enjoyed the sensory experience. We wiped our hands on a piece of plain white bread and saw all the "germs" that were on our hands after playing in the dirt. We then headed to the sink to practice our good hand washing technique. After washing our hands for just a few seconds, we learned that this "dirt" is very stubborn and won't come off with just a simple rinse of the hands in cold water. I reminded Ryan and Ethan that they had to scrub and scrub for at least 20 seconds to make sure that they got all the dirt off of their hands and so that the germs would go down the drain!

For our art today, we glued two hands to a piece of paper. One hand we left clean and white, while the other hand we decorated with "dirt" (glitter). We labelled the left hand "clean" and the right hand "dirty" and talked about why. Then, we prepared for our Valentine's Day celebration by making our valentine bags. Ryan and Ethan decorated bags with lots of glue (the more...the better in our class!), hearts, and stickers. We wrote their names on the bags in big letters so that all the other kids would know who it belonged to on Valentine's Day.