Primary and nursery harvest activities

All these activities are used in WaterAid county programmes to teach hygiene education in schools.

The blue hand game

Bangladeshi children get ready to play the blue hand game.

Credit: WaterAid / Jim Holmes

The blue hand game is a game used by WaterAid's hygiene educators in villages and towns in Africa and Asia. The game was developed to show children how easily germs are spread and get them thinking about what can be done to stop it as well as illustrating the importance of hand-washing.
Put blue chalk on the children's hands and ask them to continue with another activity or cover a ball with blue chalk and ask them to play 'catch'.

After five minutes the blue chalk is everywhere. Ask them to imagine the blue chalk represents germs so they can see how easily they are spread and how important hand washing is. This might be a good one for outdoors, but chalk is generally easy to clean off most surfaces. 

Fundraising Activity: Have a blue themed day or a disco. With as much blue clothes decoration and food you can find.

Soap and Suds

Soaps and suds teaches children the importance of washing their hands.

Credit: WaterAid / Marco Betti

For this activity, you will need: two washing bowls (at least!), one bar of soap and one jar of the spice tumeric. Cover all students hands with tumeric, be careful to avoid their clothes.

Divide the class into two groups. Each student has one minute to wash their hands, one group use soap and water, the other just water. Get each student to dry their hands on a piece of kitchen towel. The ones who didn't use soap should leave a yellow dye on the kitchen towel.

The tumeric represents germs and teaches students the importance of washing their hands with soap. This simple act can stop two in five people from suffering from water borne disease

Fundraising Activity: keep with the watery theme and have a swimathon. Students can get sponsorship from their friends and family for the number of lengths they swim. If you want to stay on dry land you can have a wind up toy race, in the water or on land. Each student pays an entrance and wins a prize if their toy comes in first!

Mosquito

Children in India playing Mosquito.

Credit: WaterAid / Marco Betti

This activity should be carried out in an area with lots of space for running, ideally the school hall or the playground. One child is 'Mosquito'. Mosquito will aim to catch other children as they try to run away. When a child is caught they are out of the game.

This game warns schoolchildren of the dangers of malaria. This is a killer disease, carried by mosquitoes. A mosquito is an insect that lives off human and animal blood. As it takes the blood it can also transfer malaria from another sufferer. In this way the disease is spread very quickly.

Mosquitoes often gather around pools of stagnant water. Children are taught not to leave waste water to go stagnant and to cover buckets of water, left over water can be used to water kitchen gardens.   

Fundraising Activity: Keep the activity going. Organise a sponsored fun run or walk in aid of WaterAid. 

Fly

You will need one plate of biscuits or similar tempting treats! The students will need to form a protective circle around the plate of goodies. Their aim is to protect the plate of food. Meanwhile two other pupils, acting as the flies, will try and get into the circle and steal the food!

This teaches students the importance of covering their food and water from flies. Flies are responsible for the transference of many nasty diseases such as Trachoma and dysentery.

Fundraising Activity: After the temptation of those goodies you may want to hold a cake sale. Get the students to make their favourite treat to sell to their classmates and raise money for WaterAid.

A picture taken by a student in Madagascar for the Sanitation in my neighbourhood game.

Sanitation in my neighbourhood

Children in Madagascar were given cameras to take pictures of what they thought was sanitation, both good and bad. Get the children to draw pictures of how they use water, sanitation and hygiene education in their day to day lives.

Fundraising Activity: Ask the children to take their pictures home to their families. Everytime they or their families undertake the activity in the picture e.g handwashing, going to the toilet, drinking a glass of water ask them to make a small donation. They will soon realise how often we use these facilities and how frequently we take them for granted.