Best Buddies Educare Centre
Practicing and Teaching Good Hygiene to your Child.
Practicing and Teaching Good Hygiene to your Child.
- Lizl Zandberg
- October 21, 2021
- 12:30 pm
- No Comments
Best Buddies blog
Best Buddies blog
Hello Again! Join me for my 2nd October Issue!
This month was global Hand Washing Day and all our Buddies stood in a circle washing their hands while singing “This is the way we wash our hands.”
Now most of all, child care providers are concentrating on sustaining good hygiene, especially during the COVID Pandemic. We need to do everything possible to keep them and ourselves healthy and safe.
Unfortunately Child Care Centres are a breeding ground for bugs and germs, where they can spread quickly and easily.
Meal preparation, diapering, playing on the jungle gym and kids brining illnesses from home are all possible birthplaces of germs, which need to be approached hygienically. Even the best child care providers who know the importance of hygiene in child care cannot protect their children against harmful bugs. This is why it is so important to develop healthy hygiene habits early in a kid’s life.
What is Hygiene?
Decent hygiene is not just about washing hands or using sanitizers. It is an actual mind-set that spans across all aspects of a child’s life.
The term hygiene entails everything that you do to maintain cleanliness, sanitation and decent standards of health at your centre. This can consists of daily tasks including constant hand washing, food safety protocols, and cleanliness before coming to school, as well as staying home when sick. Even exercise and regular sleep can be considered facets of hygiene.
The Importance of Good Hygiene:
Both child care providers and children have a masse advantage when it comes to the spread of illnesses if the practice good hygiene. For child care providers, hygiene means keeping the centre as clean as possible. They are also required to keep up with their personal hygiene habits to prevent the spread of germs, and modelling good hygiene to the children they work with.
Kids need to be taught the importance of hygiene in the bathroom, at the dinner table and elsewhere building on the foundation of creating healthy habits that they’ll take to kindergarten and beyond.
With all the opportunities germs have of spreading at a child care centre, the significance of hygiene can’t be stressed enough: good hygiene assists kids, child care providers and parents to stay safe, healthy and content.
Let’s have a look at some of the reasons for good hygiene:
Why is Hygiene Important in Child Care?
Good hygiene is essential during child care. Taking the time to develop hygiene procedures establishes your care for your staff, the children at your centre and their families.
Diseases like colds and flu thrive at child care centres, so hygiene helps lessen the chance of cross-infection between kids and child care staff. While exposure to illness is likely to increase the chances of you picking it up, good hygiene reduces the impact of the viruses as well as preventing absences of both kids and providers, and keeps sickness from spreading to the public and your own loved ones.
Changing diapers and prepping food in one facility increases infection risks this why hygiene is critical for keeping kids clean and healthy. Careful consideration to food safety and hygienic toileting procedures avoid foodborne illness and contamination from germs spreading.
How do we teach our Kids about Good Hygiene?
There are numerous opportunities in a child care centre for kids to pick up good hygiene practises from their parents, teachers and caregivers. Practicing good hygiene on a daily basis yourself is the best way to show them the importance of it — kids learn best when they see good behaviour being modelled. As a role model for kids, we need to practice what we preach if we want them to become responsible regarding their hygiene practises.
Pictures and classes are a great approach when it comes to showing the importance of hygiene in the classroom. Instructional posters on hand-washing and teeth-brushing next to sinks and toilets will give kids a visible reminder of the hygiene practices they need to follow. Take time every 6 months to give lessons covering the importance and aspects of proper hygiene. Lastly, ensure children are really practicing hygiene by observing them on a daily basis and teaching them one-on-one when needed. Washing hands with a grownup can be enjoyable and they don’t even realise that you are enforcing the importance of hand health.
The Most Important Hygiene Habits:
Hand Washing
One of the most essential but easiest, hygiene habits your child should start with is hand-washing. It is essential to explain why your child needs to do this often. You can articulate the fact that “we wash our hands to get rid of dirt and germs that make us ill.”
Another way you can describe the significance of hand-washing is to demonstrate what happens to germs when we wash our hands.
Fill a plate with water and black pepper.
Dip your child’s finger into the water and keep it there for a while
When they take their finger out of the water, there will be bits of black pepper stuck to it
Now dip that ‘dirty ‘finger into a plate of soap and swish it around to make sure that the soap covers their finger
When they dip the ‘clean’ finger into the plate of black pepper water again, the water should repel the black pepper because of the soap.
By using an actual way to visualise the difference of dirty or clean your kids should understand the difference.
Encourage your child to wash their hands with soap and water when:
- When their hands look dirty
- Before and after preparing food
- Before and after eating
- After going to the toilet
- After blowing their nose, sneezing, or coughing
- After touching animals
- After playing outside
Teaching proper hand-washing techniques:
Teach your child how to wash their hands properly by including:
• Their palms and fingers
• The back of their hands
• Their fingers and knuckles
• Their thumbs
• Their fingertips and wrists
Make sure that they are washing their hands with soap for at least 20 seconds. You can make this fun by singing the “hand wash song”:
Wash Your Hands (to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat)
“Wash, wash, wash my hands
Make them nice and clean.
Rub the bottoms, and the tops
And fingers in between.”
Ensure that they wipe their hands dry after washing them.
Safe Coughing/Sneezing:
You need to explain the importance of covering your nose and mouth with your elbow, instead of using your hand. You can play this great game with your kids by teaching them the “superhero sneeze. “Let them raise their arm and cough into their elbow like a super hero would cover themselves with their cape. Then let them put their arms out in front of them and ‘flying away’ like superman. They will never forget to use their elbow!
Oral Hygiene:
Baby teeth are just as important as adult teeth, so it’s imperative that kids brush theirs regularly. Every kid must have their own toothbrush that could maybe be their favourite colour. They should brush after meals with a tiny bit of toothpaste. You can choose a song that is close to 2 minutes that they can hum while brushing to make sure they brush their teeth for long enough.
Bathroom Hygiene:
Once kids are potty trained they need to understand how important it is to wash their hands afterwards.
Smaller children will need assistance and supervision in the bathroom to make sure they exercise good hygiene. Make certain that they wipe themselves every time they use the bathroom, always wiping from front to back. And of course, they have to wash their hands afterwards.
Young children must bath often. How frequently they need to bathe depends on each child’s specific needs. Bathing every day is applicable to children that are extremely active. Some kids have very sensitive skin and bathing daily can strip the natural oils quicker than they can be replaced, leaving them with dry and itchy skin. In such cases, bathing every other day may be the best. You can also use a gentle lotion after drying them to help their skin recover quickly.
Food Hygiene:
Hand washing must occur before and after meals to help kids keep from getting ill and spreading the mess from their dirty hands. They also need to know that they shouldn’t eat food that’s been lying around, or that has been standing in the sun for a long time because even if it looks and smells fine, bacteria is growing on it that could make them very ill. Encourage them to not lick their fingers while eating, and involve them in cleaning-up after their meal. This way they will quickly understand the importance of food hygiene.
It is our job as teachers and care givers to teach our children the importance of proper hygiene and practising good hygiene habits. I hope these tips will assist and encourage you to start as soon as possible!
Now it is Recipe Time:
Sweet potato chips
This is one of my most favourite veggie snacks and it is really very simple to make: These crispy sweet potato slices are roasted in olive oil, which makes them good for you and they’re a great lunchbox filler.
They are much healthier than potato crisps and your kiddies will have no problem eating them instead.
Ingredients
¼ small sweet potato
½ tbsp olive oil
Instructions
Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and slice the sweet potato thinly.
Toss with the olive oil and roast for 15-20 mins until crisp. Leave to cool.
Do you want to make a difference in your community, Do you know about our Best Buddies Educational Trust? Learn more about this fantastic initiative that will help an underprivileged child from our local community get 3 daily meals, and a great start to life. Click here to see more.
Lizl Zandberg
Lizl is our friendly Administration Assistant and helps in the Penguins Class. Without this wonderful Best Buddies team-member , daily tasks would become a challenge.
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