As a part of our Science topic in Year 2, we have been focusing on how to keep our bodies healthy. The children have shared a variety of great ideas such as maintaining a balanced diet, drinking plenty of water, wearing appropriate clothing for different weather, exercising regularly, and brushing our teeth. However, this week, we have been particularly concentrating on the importance of clean hands.
We began by discussing all the things our hands do and when it’s important to wash them. The children were honest in admitting that sometimes, when we’re in a hurry to get back to fun activities, we might quickly rinse our hands with water and not take the time to properly wash them. This led us to our enquiry question: How important is soap when washing our hands?
To investigate this, I showed the children the resources we would be using for our experiment: a bowl, some water, pepper, and soap. As a class, we discussed what each item represented in our experiment. The water in the bowl represented the surface of our hands, the pepper symbolized the germs that our hands come into contact with, and the soap was the key tool for cleaning our hands.
The children then carried out the investigation and observed the following:
“When I put my finger in the water and the pepper mixture, the pepper sticks to my finger.”
“This is like when the germs stick to our hands.”
“When I added the soap to the bowl, I saw all the pepper move away from the soap.”
“The soap repels the pepper, which means it does the same to our germs.”
After the experiment, we concluded as a class that soap is essential for effectively removing germs from our hands. We discussed how using soap helps to keep our bodies healthy and prevents illness.
We encourage all our Year 2 families to remind children about the importance of thorough handwashing with soap to keep germs away and stay healthy!
