Unpack your knapsack, put your lunch bags away, get changed out of your school clothes, wash your hands. Those are the chores the boys have to perform each day after we walk home from school.
They’ll always get changed, they’ll sometimes unpack their bags, they’ll rarely wash their hands. It doesn’t bother me so much, but it drives my wife nuts. I didn’t see the big deal until … I performed this little experiment to see exactly how dirty their hands were after a day of playing with their friends at school.
Grab two slices of bread.
Have your kids rub their grimy after school unwashed hands all over one, and put it in a sandwich bag. Label it accordingly.
Now have the kids go wash their hands.
Have them rub their squeaky clean paws all over another slice of bread, put it in a different bag and label it.
Leave the two bags on a counter in your kitchen and wait.
About two weeks later we noticed something happening. The germy, dirty, grimy bread started to grow mould. The clean hands slice? Looked just fine.
We’re about a month into our experiment now and .. you’d only really want to eat one of these slices. The “clean” bread looks a little stale, but there is no mould on it anywhere. The “germy” one? Well, let’s just say when your kids come home from school their hands have been places you’d rather not know about.
This simple trick will get your kids to ALWAYS wash their hands. Guaranteed. ish. They are still kids, after all.
While I still have struggles reminding the kids to unpack their lunches when we get home from school, and their rooms are still disasters, they are washing their hands more often.
I wonder why.
I’m going to try that with the little lady, she is forever “forgetting” to wash her hands.