Singing our Way to Health

It is amazing how the educational songs we learned in Kindergarten stay with you. In this case it is our ABC's and the Happy Birthday song. Both can help our youth become official germ busters and keep them healthy in school rather than sick and out of school.

I can tell you are singing your ABC's trying to remember how that might work. Well the message is not in the lyrics to the song rather the timing of it. The 4-H and EFNEP (Expanded Foods and Nutrition Education Program) staffs descended upon Rowland Norment School to help battle germs. Yes, those microscopic things that are rampant no matter where you are. However, in a school where little ones like to touch everything and everyone it makes the germ travel faster and easier than other settings. The four staff members went class to class to conduct glo-germ, a science experiment in which the students got to see the germs on their hands illuminated. Then the youth had the opportunity to go to the bathroom and wash their hands correctly (with soap and water, scrubbing for as long as it takes them to sing their ABC's or Happy Birthday, then rinsing the soap and germs away). When they returned we checked their hands to see how well they did.

Hand washing is one of the easiest and safest ways to kill the germs that could get our youth sick. By teaching them the appropriate way to do it and then empowering them to teach others we have noticed a 40% decrease in reported absenteeism's due to illness. This is a program that is usually conducted in connection with 4-H Embryology which takes place in the spring.