How To Teach Your Littles Good Hygiene Before Starting School
This post has been compensated by Acorn Influence and Kleenex® Brand. All opinions are mine alone.
With everything going on in the world right now, there’s no better time than now to buckle down and teach our kids proper hygiene. Especially with school starting back up soon, we want our kiddos to be clean, keep themselves safe and keep others safe as well. Giulian is only three but now is the perfect time for us to teach him good hygiene. If he gets used to washing his hands, blowing his nose and sneezing properly now than he will continue those good hygiene habits when he’s ready for school.
We have been doing a few things with Giulian to help teach him proper hygiene skills, so I figured I’d share them with you in hopes that you too will work with your kids before they go to school. We worked on simple but useful skills like how to blow your nose, how to sneeze and how to wash your hands. Learning these three life skills will hopefully help limit the spread of germs and overall keep our kids health on the right track.
To teach Giulian these skills, I headed to Walmart to grab some Kleenex® Ultra Soft™ and some glitter, which will act as our germs in the hand washing demonstration. We grabbed Kleenex Ultra Soft because it’s America’s #1 Ultra Tissue and is made with 3 layers to help protect our hands, plus it’s a perfect balance of softness and strength which is perfect for Giulian’s adorable little nose.
Teaching a preschool age kid to blow their nose can be tricky. Using the Kleenex helped a ton because I’d tell him to try and move the Kleenex by blowing air out of his nose. When the tissue fluttered, I knew he was blowing out of his nose rather than sucking in. We practiced by plugging one nostril at a time and blowing out the other. He really started to catch on. Make sure to let them know to throw their Kleenex away after use and then wash their hands.
The next thing we worked on with Giulian is how to sneeze. We explained to him that when you sneeze into your hands, you spread germs around because you use your hands to open doors, grab things, etc. The best way to sneeze is to turn away from other people and sneeze into the crease of your elbow. Giulian is still trying to get the hang of this, but that’s why it’s super important to start working on these things with your kids early, that way they have time to make it into a natural habit before heading to school.
Our final hygiene demonstration was the most fun. We used a glitter/lotion mixture to demonstrate how difficult it can be to get germs off your hands. We simply mixed glitter with a bit of lotion, had Giulian spread it all over his hands and then we headed to the sink for a good wash. We like to sing the ABC’s when doing his hand washing that way he washes for a long enough period of time, but his demonstration also helps to teach him about the importance of washing your hands for a long time. It took a while to get the glitter off. Giulian loved the idea that the glitter was germs and we needed to wash it all off. It also helped him to realize the importance of washing the tops of hands too, and in between his fingers to get all of the “germs” off.
I hope you’ve found these hygiene tips helpful and we hope that you teach your own kids these skills before school starts. Kleenex® Ultra Soft™ wants to ensure that no matter how back to school may look this year, they want to support student, teachers and parents to go back fully prepared, especially when it comes to hygiene and germs. Like I said, I picked our Kleenex up at Walmart in store, but you can also utilize their online grocery delivery and pickup to make your life even easier! They also have a ton of back to school items, so it can be your one stop shop when getting your kids ready to go back to school, however that looks like this year. If you have more tips for teaching our children proper hygiene, drop it in the comments!! Stay safe!
