HygieneClass | GerriSchoolNurse

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The Hygiene Class

If you are lucky enough to get invited to teach the hygiene class to fourth graders, you know it can be a challenge. Hygiene is one of those topics that can be sensitive for obvious reasons. But why not make it interactive and fun?

Inspired by the book, The Dirtiest Man in the World, by Shel Sillverstein, I invoked my inner poet and Silverstein's style to write this poem, and then gave a dramatic reason in front of the class.

The final paragraph of the poem asks the kids for suggestions for helping the Dirtiest Kid to do a head to toe clean up. The nurse leads the discussion with students providing the steps starting with the hair, ears, teeth, etc.and you might need to add or elaborate. You might add a visual as I did, a traced outline of a kid on the board where you add key words as the children progress. Ex: on hair, "shampoo." On ears, "no q-tips, use wash cloth", on teeth, "tooth paste". Because as we know, some children just stand under the water and rinse sans soap, cloth.

If you happen to have a student named Sid in the class, you should change the name in the poem to something else made up that rhymes with kid.

Prid? Patrid? Oomid? Garid? You get the idea.

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The Dirtiest Kid in the World

By Gerri Harvey

Inspired by Shel Silverstein's poem The Dirtiest Man in the World

Oh, I'm Dirty Sid, The World's Dirtiest Kid

I never take baths or showers

I can't see my shirt, it's so covered with dirt

And my ears have enough to grow flowers.

Whenever my mother sends me to bathe

I gingerly get in the tub

I try not to get too much of me wet

And I never "Rub-a-dub-dub"!

The showers are either too hot or too cold

But sometimes I stand there and rinse

I've always felt if I get wet I might melt

So I am pretty hard to convince.

I don't brush my teeth

I don't wash my hair

I try to avoid touching soap

My clothes often reek cuz I wear them all week

And my sneakers stink beyond hope.

I think that my sneakers wouldn't be bad

If I wore socks on my feet now and then

I tried that once, kept them on for 6 months

But they smelled worse than they'd ever been.

I don't wash my face, except once a year

And my nails, I don't scrub or cut them

In my hair can be seen glitter from last Halloween

And my eyelashes stick when I shut them.

The thought of a towel and soap makes me howl

So when people have something to tell me

They don't come up and tell it- they stand back and yell it

I think they're afraid they might smell me.

Now what I want to know, what I want to find out

The changes that need to be made

To change this whole scene and make myself clean

Now that I'm in fourth grade.

So kid’s can you help me and possibly tell me

I think there's some secret knack

I don't want to stink and I really do think

It's time that I clean up my act!