We use foam soap and sing the entire alphabet song while rubbing our hands together and make sure the children remember to get both sides of their hands and between their fingers, waiting to put our hands under the water to rinse until we’ve finished the song.  We talk about how the germs will just hold on instead of getting washed away if we don’t rub the soap on long enough.  Germs are very hard for young children to understand since they can’t see them, so we need to talk about them a lot if we want children to understand how and why to protect themselves from illness.    

We guide the children’s hands to do the steps of zipping that are just a little harder than what they can do themselves.  This could be helping them place their hands to pull the zipper up after we thread it, holding the two pieces of the zipper bottom together ourselves while helping the child hold the other side and insert it, guiding both of the child’s hands to do the whole process themselves, or just checking to make sure they have gotten the inserted side all the way to the bottom once they’ve inserted it on their own.  Zipping and other “fine motor” activities (tasks with hands and fingers) help prepare their fingers and hands for writing!