One of our priorities now is to promote more frequent hand and face washing for children in schools. And with COVID-19, the need for children to wash their hands and faces more frequently may be more serious today than ever before. 
Kids literally touch their worlds with their hands. They don’t wash their hands frequently enough and then they touch their faces with soiled hands throughout the day.
Estimates vary but it is believed children touch their faces as much as 16 times per hour.
This gives germs and bacteria, including possible COVID pathogens, on their hands a free ride to their faces, and from their faces it’s just a ‘hop, skip, and a jump’ into their mouths, eyes, ears, and nose. The result is essentially cross contamination.
Children must be taught to properly and frequently wash their hands throughout the day. Then with clean hands, wash their faces using the following steps:
• Apply warm water to the face; moderate temperature protects the skin
• Use a facial cleanser specifically designed for cleaning the face; in many cases, bar soap may be too harsh
• Gently scrub the face with hands or preferably a wash cloth especially around the eyes
• Rinse with warm water; pat dry
• Apply a moisturizer if necessary
And Here’s the Song
Teaching kids to remember to wash their faces is the hard part. What often works is to make up a rhyme or jingle. They even teach kids foreign languages now using rhymes and jingles.
A rhyme that can prove very effective goes like this:
Let’s wash our hands today,
And do it throughout the day,
Let’s wash our hands today,
So we stay clean and healthy. Hooray!
Let’s wash our face today,
And do it throughout the day,
Let’s wash our face today,
So we stay clean and healthy. Let’s play!.
More info on COVID and kids can be found here
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