How Are Germs Spread? Demonstrating the Importance of Hand-Washing

Teach your children the importance of hand-washing with this unique demonstration! This activity is an excellent visual demonstration for how germs are spread!

It’s August! Which means that school is just around the corner! It is an exciting time filled with new beginnings, new school supplies, and new friends. But it is also a time when germs reemerge and get passed around from one child to another. We decided to illustrate how germs are spread in a fun and engaging way that will hopefully help our boys to remember to practice healthy hand hygiene!

How Are Germs Spread?

Here’s what you’ll need: a bottle of hand sanitizer, glitter, and a few willing participants.

Squirt some hand sanitizer on your child’s hands.

Pour some glitter on top of the hand sanitizer

Have your child rub his/her hands together until there is glitter all over.

Have that child go around the room, shaking hands with friends/other siblings and touching a few surfaces.

After every child has been included and multiple surfaces have been touched, have the children look at their hands and around the room to see if they can find glitter.

Tell your children that germs are kind of like the glitter on your hands…except germs are invisible. Every time we touch another person or a surface, our germs get passed around. Some of these germs can make us really sick. Then have your child wash his/her hands with soap and water and see what happened to the glitter. There might still be a little bit left, but the majority of the glitter gets washed away.

Read Germs Are Not for Sharing: This is a great book for teaching young kids about the importance of proper hand hygiene.

One thing to mention to your kids after trying this demonstration and reading this book is that washing your hands with soap and water is always the best way to clean your hands and get rid of germs. But sometimes we don’t have quick access to soap and water, so using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer helps to kill the germs on our hands and keep us from getting sick!