Hygiene Activities for Kids
If you want your children to lead healthy lifestyles, you need to show them the way to do it. You can model proper behavior, eating habits and exercise routines.
You can enroll them in sports or fitness classes. And you can also teach them about personal hygiene with a few simple and fun activities that will promote a lifetime of hygienic health.
Wash Your Hands
When children wash their hands, they often skip several important steps; in fact, it might cause you to wonder if they removed any germs at all. Teach children that when they wash their hands, they should always use soap and water, and keep their hands in contact with the soap for a long time. In order to teach this, have children sing a song while they scrub. This will keep them soaping long enough to kill the germs on their hands.
Have children wet their hands and then turn off the faucet. Next they should rub some soap into their palms and begin to sing. They can sing either the alphabet song or the “Happy Birthday” song. When the song is over, it is okay to turn the faucet back on and rinse off the soap.
Brush Your Teeth
Tooth-brushing can be a fun activity for kids, who enjoy colorful toothpaste and character-covered toothbrushes. However, with all the cartoon commercialism, you may be concerned that their teeth aren’t really getting clean. Help children learn about oral hygiene by showing them the proper way to brush their teeth.
Start by showing children how to put a small amount (pea-sized ball) of toothpaste on their brushes. Then they should wet the brush and begin brushing. You can use a kitchen timer to teach them how long their tooth-brushing should take; mark the timer with a permanent marker for two minutes, so the kids will know when it’s okay to stop.
Or you can simply show them a clock and tell them that the second hand has to go all the way around two times before they can stop brushing.
You can purchase toothbrushes with built-in flashing lights to help with this process. The child pushes a button on the toothbrush and it blinks. When the light goes out, they can stop brushing and rinse. You can also purchase special mouthwash that will show the children where their plaque build-up is located, so they will see how effective their brushing really was.
Other Hygiene Tips
You can make a game or fun activity out of other hygiene tasks as well. Make an incentive chart on paper and give your child stickers for maintaining good hygiene. Give them soap in fun shapes or sudsy bubble bath in the bathtub to encourage thorough cleansing.
Teach them to cough or sneeze into a colorful handkerchief instead of their palms. Good hygiene will be just around the corner.
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