Printable Material on Hygiene for Children

Different Types of Printable Material on Hygiene for Children

Dental Care

Teaching children to brush their teeth is a habit that will last a lifetime. It is important to start brushing teeth as soon as the first teeth appear. For babies, use a very soft toothbrush and brush for the child. As children gain motor skills, they should begin to brush themselves, although you should always double-check their progress and hit any areas the child might have missed during brushing. There are many printables that will help children learn to brush their teeth effectively. Here are just a few:

• Dental Health Lapbooking Project Pack is a printable themed unit study on dental health.

• Colgate offers many different projects and games for [[Preschool_Dental_Health|preschool dental health] to help make tooth brushing time fun for children. In addition to online activities and games, they offer quite a few printable worksheets.

• Kids Tooth Dr. offers a printable storybook about a child's first visit to the dentist. Work with your child to fill in his/her name and information and make the visit less frightening.

• [Monster Island offers a hilarious printable letter from the "Tooth Fairy". The tooth fairy will check one of a number of funny options such as that the child has been caught extracting the tooth by force in an attempt to get money from the fairy. The whole family will get a kick out of this letter.

Bath Time

As children grow older, it can be a power struggle to get a child who once loved playing in the tub for hours to take a short ten minute shower. Printables about personal hygiene and kids' bath time can be a great help in these situations. Here are a few of the better printable material on hygiene for children:

• Slipper Soap Craft can be a great way to get kids involved and make them feel as though they have some control over the process of getting clean. Print out the templates in either black and white or color.

• Family Fun offers a printable article featuring many different bath time games that can make getting clean fun and teach good hygiene skills at the same time.

Hand Washing

Hand washing can help prevent the spread of illness and germs and is a good habit to get your children into. Here are a few of the better printables on this topic:

• Softsoap has a site called Lather Up for Good Health. In addition to the online activities, there are many printable sheets that will help teach your child hand washing basics. You'll find coloring pages, a hand washing chart and even a printable poster.

• Germ Juice features Word files that can be downloaded and printed on topics such as hand washing. You'll also find downloads on germs, coloring book pages on germs and posters.

Theme Units on Hygiene

If you want to cover all of the above topics at one time, it might be worthwhile to spend some time working through a study unit on hygiene with your child. You can find these units for free or at a very low cost at various places around the Internet, including:

• Ed Helper where you can find a themed unit on hygiene. The lessons within the unit are aimed at grades 1-6 and cover topics such as washing hands, bad breath, personal hygiene, dental hygiene, acne and having a good hair day. All of the items are printable, although some do require a small membership fee.

• Hygiene-Educ.com offers a themed lesson plan with many printable materials that covers topics like teeth, hand washing and personal hygiene and appearance.

The best thing to do is to start with one daily habit at a time when your child is small and ingrain the behavior in him from an early age. You'll be less likely to have problems getting a child to brush his teeth at 10 years old, if you've trained him at 2 that he must brush his teeth twice a day. However, even if your child is older, it is never too late to learn good habits. Use positive reinforcement, reminders, rewards and set a good example, and your child will likely have excellent hygiene.