Art and hand washing activities

We had a gas man round early this morning to fix our boiler so Harry and Peter occupied themselves by building a very tall marble run and colouring. Harry is creating another Batman picture so he worked on this.

We then had some friends round. We looked through this library book, which has different images of art designed to evoke fear through various themes - supernatural, war and nature vs man. The children then created their own pictures designed to be scary. They really enjoyed this and did it for a long time. 

We also did an activity with our friends showing why it is important to wash hands, which I had seen on An Ordinary Life blog. We watched this YouTube video about germs first. 

We then rubbed oil and glitter on the hands of two of the children to simulate bacteria. Those children touched the hands of the other children, passing the 'bacteria' along to show how easily this happens. 

We tried to wash the glitter germs off with plain water, which didn't work due to the oil on our hands (simulating natural oil on our skin). 

We then washed it off with soapy water, which did work. We discussed surfactant properties and the relationship between oil and water, being that they do not mix and the oil repels the water, so a surfactant (the soap) is needed.

When our friends left we went out on bikes to our local playground for the afternoon. The grass had recently been cut so Harry and Peter mainly played with this and left the bath very green at home later! It felt very autumnal as lots of leaves had fallen around the park.