What to do when faced with a global health crisis...

First, find a way to laugh about it.

Then, turn it into a teachable moment.

The kewl girls have been asking lots of questions about the swine flu that people keep talking about, so today I followed their lead and used their interest in a current hot topic to focus on a broader topic. Today, we learned about germs. We looked at pictures of different types of germs and talked about what they are, what they do and how they work. We colour coded them to make them easier to understand and recognise, then we made germ cut outs and hid them around home.... So we could play germ busters and 'wash our hands' of them!!! Germs don't like it when you was your hands, you know.
To work the swine flu into our understanding of germs, we got face masks and found out about how they stop germs from getting into your body. Then we decorated the outside of our masks with yucky germs and the inside with healthy germs. Did you know - face masks actually make great fashion accessories?? It's true - Miss F told me so.

Finally, here is a copy of the email Miss F and Miss J wrote to their friend, telling her what they know about germs. I think this pretty much sums it up!

"there are four kinds of germs. they are bacteria viruses fungi protozoa. some bacteria is good and some is bad. viruss live in a host sometimes that is us body and gets sick. fungi are like plants but they dont eat soil and sun they eat in your body. protozao are water germs they can swim they make yuck runy poo. germs make you sick until you get them out or dead. wash hands stops germs lots like sammi. love from f and j."

P.S.. Sammi is our friend who uses her hands for lots and lots of things - even talking!