On Tuesday we were learning the importance of hand washing and how to describe that germs may be present even if they are not seen.

Whatever we do, we come into contact with germs. It’s easy for a germ on your hand to end up in your mouth.Washing your hands is the best way to stop germs from spreading.

We think some of the best times to wash your hands are:

• When your hands are dirty.
• Before eating or touching food you are helping cook.
• After using the bathroom.
• After blowing your nose or coughing.
• After touching pets or other animals.
• After playing outside.
• Before and after visiting a sick relative or friend.

We undertook an experiment to show the importance of why we should wash our hands. Here is the steps for this experiment:

• 1. Put a drop of lotion on your hands and rub them together to spread the lotion out evenly.
• 2. With your hands over newspaper, ask your partner to put a pinch of glitter in the palm of one of your hands.
• 3. With your hands still over the newspaper, make a fist with the hand that has glitter on it, then spread your fingers out. (We had to say what we saw)
• 4. Now press the palms of your hands together and pull them apart. (We then had to look at our hands and notice what happened)
• 5. Touch your partner’s hand. (We noticed that the glitter moved onto our partners hands)
• 6. Get a paper towel and use it to wipe your hands clean of all the glitter. (the paper towel only took some of the glitter off but it didn’t take it all off)
• 7. After using the paper towel, try using soap and water to wash your hands. (After thoroughly washing our hands the glitter did come off – some of us had to go back and wash our hands again as we noticed one or two bits of glitter in between our fingers)

The glitter was acting the same way that the germs on our hands act. There are a lot of germs, they spread around easily, and it can be hard to get them off. The difference between the glitter and germs is that germs are so small you can’t see them without a microscope. You have to know when you may have come into contact with germs and then wash your hands.

If we accidently touched our mouth, nose, or eyes while doing this experiment, we may have found glitter getting left behind. Germs travel the same way and can easily enter our body if we touch our face with dirty hands and germs can make us sick. That’s why it’s important to wash our hands before we eat. It is also important to wash our hands after touching something that might have germs, such as when we use the bathroom or play outside. If we don’t, the germs can easily spread to more places and to other people and cause sickness.