With the end of the COVID lockdown now beginning to look in sight, it is an unusual time to be consider preparing your children for going back to school.
However, the schools re-opening will also create a new avenue for bringing the virus into your home.
For this reason, it is important that you equip your kids with the tools and defences they need to return to the classroom.
With this in mind, here are some top tips for keeping your kids healthy when they go back to school.
1. Load Up their Pencil Case
While the pens, rulers, and erasers, are still useful in the pencil case, what is now also needed is hand sanitiser.
At the start of most lessons, schoolboys and girls are quick to rummage through their pencil cases to get the things they need for the next 45 minutes. By including a pocket-size bottle of hand sanitiser alongside their regular equipment, you can gently remind your kids to sanitise their hands even when you are not there.
2. Include Wet Wipes in a School Bag Side Pocket
Kids are messy creatures, always causing spills, finding grime, and getting dirty. Whether it is after breaktime, after getting to school, or just before catching the tram home, children frequently need a wipe with a wet cloth.
Help your children get into the habit of keeping clean and healthy by installing a packet of disinfecting wipes into a side pocket on their school bag. Not only will this help your teenage child look cleaner, but it will also kill any bacteria and viruses they may have collected.
3. Reminders in the Snack Box
One of the best parts of any child’s school day is snack time. Unfortunately, eating and drinking is a risky time during a pandemic.
Whether you child is eating a sandwich, apple, bar of chocolate, or bottle of drink, it is always advisable to sanitise or wash hands before they begin munching and slurping.
While no child wants to get sick, a lot of children fail to naturally remember to clean their hand before eating, so reminding your child to wash or sanitise their hands is highly recommended. For more absent-minded children, it may be worthwhile placing a reminder with their snacks or inside their lunchbox to boost the chance of it happening.
It can also be a loving (and secret) reminder that you are thinking of them.
4. If they See Hand Sanitiser They Must Use It
Create a family rule; whenever someone sees hand sanitiser they must use it. Entering a shop? Use the hand sanitiser available. Going into school? Use the hand sanitiser available. At the train station ticket counter? Use the hand sanitiser available.
5. Wipe Down and Wash School Items Regularly
Every item in your child’s school bag has touched the heavy-contact surfaces at school or on public transport. Textbooks placed on desks, pens shared with classmates, bags placed on bus seats; all have a risk of contamination.
It is therefore advisable to clean items before they are given free-range to move around your home. Textbooks are often used in the bedroom, so give them a wipe before they get there. Set up a different set of pens and pencils for use with homework, so that the potentially infected set can remain sealed in the pencil case for use at school. Wash drink and food containers regularly and use a disinfecting wipe to clean the high contact areas on each school bag.
The single greatest blessing of the coronavirus pandemic has been the fact that children have been largely kept safe. However, if they become infected or if their possessions come into contact with the virus there is a chance that it can make you or someone else in your family very ill indeed.
As the restrictions on daily life are slowly lifted there is the risk that we all become complacent. Yet if we are to avoid another wave of lockdown and keep the schools and shops open we must all do our part to avoid infection.
Keeping hands clean and staying healthy have always been two sides of the same coin. Hopefully, it is something that our children will have well instilled in them. They will have survived the first global pandemic since the Spanish flu and will tell their children and grandchildren about these days and their new cleaning routine on returning to school.
Help them and help yourself to stay healthy by investing the time in teaching your kids to sanitise more often. Part of that is investing in hand gels and disinfecting wipes that will empower (and remind) them to do so.
AG PROTECT, who sponsor this website, is an established supplier of hand sanitiser products, with a wide range of pocket-sized disinfecting sprays and travel pack hand gels all of which meet EU safety standards.
For high-quality hand sanitiser gels, sprays, and disinfecting wipes, visit: AG PROTECT.
Photo credit: jun yang from Pixabay, Bruno /Germany, klimkin, Nghi Nguyen, & Julia M Cameron from Pexels
