On 19 February 2020, at Little Footprints Preschool Punggol 107, the teacher and children conducted experiments in regards to theimportance of handwashing.
The teacher had a discussion with the children prior to the experiment on the various ways of washing hands. Children shared that we could use sanitizers and washing hands at the sink.
The first experiment the children did was to see how germs can spread. The teacher placed oil on the children’s hands and each child had different coloured glitter (which represented germs) placed on their hands. The children then went around shaking hands and high fiving one another.
After that, the children observed their hands and saw different coloured glitters on their hands which shows how germs can spread.
The children then tried to clean their hands using sanitizers and realised that it was not an easy task and their hands were not very clean.
The children then tried washing hands with just water and they observed that their hands still had glitter on them.
The children then used soap and water, as well as following the steps to handwashing. They the found out their hands were finally clean and had no glitter on it anymore.
Another experiment the children did was with apples, some of the apples were touched after an activity without washing their hands, another apple was touched after washing hands with just sanitizer, another with just water, another with water and soap , lastly, an apple that was untouched(labelled controlled).
The children observed the changes during the next 2 weeks.
The apple that was touched without washing hands was rotten and had a lot of browning on it.
The apple that was washed with sanitiser was slughtly rotten and had browning on it.
The apple that was touched after washing hands with just water had some browning on it.
The apple that was touched after washing hands with soap was clean and had very little browning on it.
The apple that was left untouched was slight browning.
The apple that was left untouched was the cleanest apple of them all even after 2 weeks.
The children then concluded that it was important for them to wash hands with soap as washing hands with just water or sanitizer is not sufficient.
*Experiments and observations were conducted before circuit breakers measures were implemented.
