Shine a Light on Germs and Get Glowing Reviews

2020 has been all about germs - tons of information, but still, germs are invisible so we can’t actually see how they get around.

Or can we?

Enter Glo Germ. It’s a company that makes products (of the same name) for teaching proper hand washing and infection prevention in an enlightening way, literally. It reminds me of something I did as a kid where we were given a special tablet to chew after we brushed our teeth and it showed up blue wherever our brush missed. Boy, was that revealing. This is similar.

If you love to get a “Wow, that’s amazing!” from your kids as much as I do, this one’s for you.

There are a couple ways to use it at home or in a group when teaching about germs or hygiene.

Here’s the first. Put some on your hands when no one is looking. Rub it in so it doesn’t show, and go about your morning routine.

After an hour or two, tell the kids what you’ve been up to and bring out the blacklight. Take it all around where you went and show how many surfaces you touched and spread the Glo Germ to. Shine the light on the kids, too, to see if they picked up any of the powder left behind on the surfaces you touched.

Talk about how if you had sneezed into your hand and didn’t wash, and then grabbed the cereal box, touched your face, opened drawers, etc., instead of the powder, that would have been your sneezlies – yuck!

Then, have them each rub some on their hands really well and wash their hands even better than they normally do. Inspect their hands under the light and see if some spots could have used more attention.  Have them wash again, and inspect under the light again. Still room for improvement? Probably.

Keep working on it until the lesson has been learned about what it takes to really get your hands clean. Test yourself too! Explain that it’s not just about sneezes, either. Think about raw meat, pet dander, stuff that’s brought in by other people, etc.

Glo Germ comes in powder, gel and oil form. Skip the oil version because it’s staining. There’s a mini kit with a keychain-size blacklight and a small bottle of powder for about $12, and a small bottle of the gel for around $7 that you can use with your own blacklight if you have one. Their bigger kits are designed for companies with a lot of employees, so skip over those.

You’ll get way more than you need for your initial experiment and a review down the road, so consider splitting it with another family or doing it with a group.

Let me caution you here not to embarrass anyone. Don’t NOT tell them it’s on their hands, wash up for a snack and see how they did. They may have been distracted and not done the job they should have. And keep the light away from personal areas in case someone scratched an itch they’d rather not have broadcast.

If you’re like me and like to get the most out of something, or if you’re just a creative thinker in general (or creative-thinker-in-training), it may have occurred to you that this could work the other way, too.

Years ago I put it on the hands of the greeters at our church right before Sunday School. I told them I was trying something, and asked them to just do what they normally did. So they shook hands with people as they came in and some of those people greeted others in the same way.

After the opening time and before we broke into groups, I revealed my plan, got out the blacklight and presented a short lesson on how GOOD things spread too. Some people had been reached out to, literally, and some hadn’t.

This could be a reminder of how we all make a difference and how we can leave a mark on each other’s lives by spreading our faith and fellowship – hopefully from clean hands!