Marion County Cooperative Extension Office Expanded Food and Nutrition Program recently partnered with one of the local elementary schools, when the school had concerns with how sick some of the children were and how rapidly the numbers of illnesses were growing. The school wanted a program that focused on proper handwashing techniques and they wanted their students to be more aware of how important proper handwashing and hygiene practices were on the prevention of the spread of germs.  Each class was a 30 minute lesson on the Why’s, When, What and How to wash your hands properly. Along with each lesson, I also used the Purple Glitter Bug to help demonstrate how we have germs on our   hands and how you can’t see those germs with the naked eye. The Purple Glitter Bug is a plastic bug’s head with a black light in the bug’s mouth, so that the children could put their hands in and view the amount of germs on their hands.

Along with the “Glitter Bug, I also used a lotion that was a glitter lotion that represented “fake germs” The “fake germs” lotion was given to each  child, where they  rubbed their hands with the lotion and put under the black light, this gave them an idea how much germs they come in contact with. Then they were instructed to wash their hands for 30 seconds and then return to the bug and see if they had any lingering germs or had they washed their hands properly. Prior to the start of the program, children were only washing their hands properly 35% of the time, once the lessons were complete, that number grew to 70%. By implementing this into the curriculum, hopefully this will reduce the number of children getting sick and decrease the number of absenteeism from school. Due to the recent pandemic of COVID-19, this was the perfect school year to have this class. Hopefully the children have taken what they learned and applied to their daily routine and help fight the spread.