Helpful Hygiene Tips

Personal hygiene can be a sensitive subject but an important one to many aspects of our health.  Good hygiene is a crucial component to not only physical health but also emotional health and how we feel about ourselves as well as social health and how we interact with others.  It is important to practice good personal hygiene to help prevent cavities and bad breath, or body odor, infections, and even other health problems.  The resources provided to you here are helpful tools that you can use to educate appropriate personal hygiene to develop a good hygiene plan and even make it fun!

Here is a video about the importance of personal hygiene with 10 helpful tips: Personal Hygiene Video

Learn About Germs!

• Talk about the difference between clean and dirty

Dental Hygiene

Hand Washing!

• Here is a Centers for Disease Control video that discusses the make-up of germs and bacteria on our hands and how disease spreads. It also includes tips to help stop the spread of germs:
  • Putting Your Hands Together

• Check out this website for some great handwashing resources:
  • http://www.artofwashinghands.com/

• Use the glitter germ truth activity to provide a visual example of how germs spread
  • https://www.wellness4ky.org/resource/glitter-germ-truth/ 

Tips for Visual Learning-

• Look at picture examples of clean and dirty or good and bad hygiene (Disclaimer: be careful when searching for images of bad hygiene)
• Ask questions about the people or things in those pictures
  • Would you want to use/wear that item?  How do you think it smells?
  • How would you feel if this person sat beside you? Would you hire this person for a job?
  • What can this person do better? What are they doing right?

Sequence Hygiene Routines-

• Talk through each step needed to complete the tasks of hygiene care to help think about what needs to happen and in what order:
  • What needs to happen every day?
  • What tasks do you do in the morning?
  • What tasks do you do in the evening?
  • What tasks do you do throughout the day?
  • What needs to happen about once a week?
  • What only happens occasionally?
• Also, sequence the pictures of the steps involved in those tasks.  See example graphics at the bottom of this page.

Here is a link to an iOS application (for iPhone/iPad) that offers an innovative and comprehensive way to learn about daily personal hygiene: iDo Hygiene

This is a great visual resource with powerpoints and handouts. Some even include universal design, for adapting to different learning styles.  You might want to update a few, but it’s a great alternative to starting from scratch: Personal Hygiene/Grooming Ideas