Hand Washing Experiment for Kids

What is a great experiment for kids for learning the importance of hand-washing?

Yes, there are many and many of them are very easy and require only a couple of household items. 

This particular one I will be showing today is one we did with my daughters. 

It was fun and they wanted to keep learning – play based learning! 

Below I will share with you how we went about this simple hand washing experiment and what items I used to bring this kids activity forth. 

Note: Are you looking for an easy science experiment you can try at home? This Floating Dry Erase Marker was so much fun to watch as the magic unfolded. 

Supplies: 

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• Pair of gloves

• Food Coloring/Paint

• Dish Soap

• Water

• Bin

How do you teach hand washing? 

You can teach the importance of hand washing in a couple of different ways. 

One way is the way we tried this time around. Here are the steps we used for proper hand washing:  

• We used gloves so that the food coloring did not stain my girls hands. 

• I made sure to use the color black or navy blue food coloring so that we were able to see which parts of the glove they missed. 

• Mix dishwashing soap with a tiny bit of food coloring until the dish soap is fully dyed.

• Pour a tiny amount onto the worn clean gloves. 

• Practice hand washing properly by attempting the original hand washing techniques.

• Make sure the gloves are not missing any food colored soapy areas.

• Then, they immersed their hands into the water bin and washed their hands. 

How to Hand Washing Experiment for Kids Video

What are some fun ways to teach hand washing? 

How do you clean dirty hands?

The method I explained above is one way you can practice proper hand washing. 

There are a couple other methods I would like to also share. They are as follows: 

• Pepper/Cinnamon Experiment with Qtip. 

  • Add pepper water onto a plate. 

  • Then, insert the tip of a clean qtip in dish soap

  • Insert the qtip into the pepper plate. 

  • Watch as the pepper moves away from the qtip with dishwashing soap (hence pretend germs)

• Bread Mold Experiment

  • Grab a slice of bread and touch it with dirty hands. 

  • Then, grab an additional slice of bread after having washed your hands properly. 

  • Insert both slices of bread into a plastic bag and mark which one is which outside of the bag. 

  • Leaving them out for a few days, watch to see which one molds quicker and in which spot. 

Why it’s important to wash your hands? 

How do you teach hand hygiene? 

It is important to wash your hands because it will prevent the spread of disease and it is also good hygiene. 🙂

It is also important to teach kids at a young age how to properly wash their hands so they know when to. 

My 3 year old picked up washing her hands from my oldest. 

My oldest learned rather quickly from her grandmother. 

Learning how to wash hands properly can be fun with the, “How clean are your hands experiments” mentioned above! 🙂