Good clean fun

Hygiene is serious fun (oh, yes it is!!)

Making children aware of the importance of simple hygiene is fundamental to protecting them. ToyGuard’s mantra is education, prevention and protection. We aim to make educating even the youngest children about germs and cleaning into good, clean fun!

Last year, in association with specialist nursery insurer Morton Michel, ToyGuard ran an art competition inviting children across the UK to ‘design and draw a germ’. Their works of art can be see in our Germ Gallery. The competition introduced the topic of hygiene to nursery aged children.

"The children had great fun designing their germs. We also had a very interesting discussion about germs and the effect they can have on us". K. FRANKLAND, PLAY WORKS.

In addition to on-line games (which will be added to in time), we have developed a series of hygiene sheets for children to colour in. The colouring-in series includes ‘How to wash your hands properly’: we believe proper hand-washing is where good hygiene begins.

Handwashing is key

The simplest way to minimise the spread of infection is handwashing. We think this is so important that we carry out FREE ToyGuard hand wash training for our clients within the nursery sector up and down the country: using ultra-violet light and fluorescent powder to imitate how germs stick to the skin and get into hard to reach places like under your nails and between your fingers…before highlighting the best washing technique!

There are some simple things that you can do to make hand washing easy for children:

Don’t use antibacterial soap. The odds of bacteria developing resistance to antibacterial agents are increased where the soap is left on the skin in a diluted form.

Foaming soap makes hand washing more fun for kids – and a far smaller amount (about 10% of the amount of liquid soap per dose) is needed to spread easily over much larger area of skin (so it saves you money too!). Click here to see the money saving soap figures!

Use paper towels – the physical action of rubbing the hands with paper removes soap, moisture and any dead skin which helps take away the germs food source. Electric hand dryers are usually ineffective (how often have you rubbed your hands down your trousers after using one?), leave bacteria on the hands and warm the skin to a perfect temperature for it to grow. To minimise paper towel waste ToyGuard have developed a paper roller machine that keeps the used towels in separate storage area within the machine.

Hand Sanitisers – to use or not to use?

Alcohol hand sanitiser gels can give a false sense of security in the nursery – they do not kill ‘everything’, for example norovirus.  They do not clean hands as effectively as soap and water (and paper towels), but they certainly can be used as a back up when you have a mild outbreak of infection in the nursery, or you are out on a field trip where soap and water might either not be available or ‘a bit iffy’. Alcohol gels dissipate very quickly so they need to be reapplied frequently; they can also dry the skin so are unsuitable for people with eczema or dry skin conditions. The best hand sanitiser gels are polymer based: these contain ultra low amounts of alcohol (or none atall) and will last on the skin a lot longer. We, of course, recommend ToyGuard Hand Sanitiser!