Inspire and motivate with Ella’s Hand Washing School
Good hand hygiene habits starts early in life
The importance of hand washing
Absenteeism and illness due to poor hand hygiene in kindergartens and schools is a real problem. It affects not only the teachers and children, but often also involves parents having to take extra time off from work. We know that teaching and monitoring hygiene is a major challenge for parents as well as educational institutions.
Hand washing
Washing ones hands helps to prevent illnesses and the best defense.
There are three main types of transfer (bacteria and/or virus) that are desired to interrupt:
- from the hands to — eyes, nose, mouth, and open sores;
- to another person either via direct hand-to-hand contact or via indirect hand-to-object-to-hand contact;
- from hands to food during food preparation.
Wipe away the germs
When cleaning their hands, many people get in the bad habit of a quick wash, then a quick shake to get the drips off, then go. If you can teach children from an early age to dry hands until they are completely free of moisture, then bad habits are less likely to develop.
Using Liquid or Foam soap and rinsing with water, removes a large fraction of most bacteria — especially when followed by thorough drying. Using soap and rinsing with water is also an effective method of reducing the number of viruses on the skin.
One advantage with disposable paper towels is that the bacteria get trapped in the towel. It is when bacteria are transferred to the body interior that illness can occur.
It’s not only important to know how to wash your hands, when to wash your hands is equally important
Teachers/Parents should take special care to wash their hands:
• When hands are visibly dirty
• After visiting the toilet or helping a child with a toilet visit
• After being outside
• Before eating and handling food
• When coming home
• After blowing the nose or assisting a child
Children should be motivated to wash their hands:
• When hands are visibly dirty
• After visiting the toilet
• After playing outside
• Before eating snacks and meals
• When coming home
• After blowing the nose
How
We recommend that the hand wash routine takes up to 20 seconds for a child.Just as long as it takes to sing Twinkle, twinkle little star.
The hand washing steps
1. Wet your hands with clean warm water
2. Apply liquid or foam soap and rub your hands together vigorously and scrub all surfaces
4. Rinse with clean water
5. Dry hands until thoroughly dry with a paper towel
Did you know!
Most of us were taught to wash our hands by our parents. What they didn't know was that good hand hygiene also relies on hand drying!
