Germs in Class LH get out of hand!!

To complete our topic about significant people, we have found out why Florence Nightingale and Joseph Lister were important and how they have had an impact on our lives today.

We understood how Florence Nightingale improved hospitals to make them clean and comfortable for patients and then how Joseph Lister implemented sterilisation and cleanliness particularly for operations and dealing with open wounds.

Thinking about the importance of staying clean and hygienic, we set up an experiment to see how germs can spread so easily among us.  The 5 “germ” children had their hands covered in germs (glitter) and proceeded to start their dice game with their groups. After a very short time, the ‘germs’ were beginning to spread.  After 10 minutes of playing the game, every child could see how the germs had spread – some even on their faces where they had touched their faces!

At the end of the game, different children cleaned their germs using a variety of methods:- a) dry paper towel, b) just water, c) 2 seconds with soap and water and d) with soap and water for 20 seconds.  Our resident class doctor, Ivy, examined all the hands after they had been washed in the variety of ways and noted the differences in the results.  All the children had made a prediction about the results and interestingly the dry paper towel wiped off more ‘germs’ than just plain water but the best was definitely using soap and water.

To finish the lesson, ‘germs’ (ground cloves) were dropped into a bowl of water and floated all over the water surface.  A real ‘wow’ moment followed when a drop of soap was dropped in and the children could see the ‘germs’ scatter to the edge of the bowl showing how germs do not like soap.