For many of us as adults, taking care of ourselves might be second nature, but for children, healthy habits need to be taught and learned. One of the benefits of teaching children how to practice healthy living is that it can help prevent germs from spreading, reduce their chances of exposure to illnesses and equip them for a lifetime with the good habit of being hygiene conscious.

An easy good habit to teach children is how to properly wash their hands using the following steps:

Materials needed: washable paint or mud or chalk or stew, an item to pass around.

Start by explaining to your child that germs can enter into our bodies through our eyes, noses and mouths, and can pass from person to person when someone coughs, sneezes or by touching something with your hands. Ask your child to identify these different body parts by pointing to their own bodies.

To help your child visualize the movement of germs, coat his or her previously washed hands using a staining substance (this will be the ‘pretend germ’).

Then encourage your child to interact with you, their siblings or friends by picking an item to pass around, like a ball.

Once passed around, have everyone check their hands and surfaces for ‘pretend germs’. How have the germs spread?

Finally, remind your child that this is why we do things like, washing our hands, coughing into our elbows and sneezing into a tissue.