Singer's clever way of showing kids how to wash their hands properly

The WHO is recommending hand washing as a key way to fight coronavirus, but getting your children to thoroughly scrub as they sing Happy Birthday can be tricky.

Now, UK singer Tom Fletcher has revealed a clever way to ensure your kids are doing it as effectively as possible – and all you need is pepper.

In a post shared to Twitter, the McFly star – who is raising son Buzz, six, son Buddy, four, and one-year-old son Max with wife Giovanna Fletcher – shared a video of him teaching a group of children the handy trick.

The singer and guitarist, 34, can be seen in the clip standing at a table, surrounded by a group of children, with a bowl of water and a pepper grinder in his hands.

As Tom sprinkled the pepper into the water, he told them: “This is why we all have to wash our hands.

“This will show you what the germs are like.”

Pointing at the specks of pepper floating in the water, the father-of-three explained: “So they’re lots of germs in there, you see those germs?”

He then encouraged one of the children to put their fingers in the water, with a little girl called Summer volunteering.

When she removed it, she had pepper specks on her wet skin.

Getting her to use her imagination, Tom then told her: “Look there’s germs on your finger.”

He then put some soap on the area and told her to put it back in the bowl of water - which sent the specks rushing to the edge of the bowl.

As the children uttered “wow”, the star added: “The germs ran away!”

Captioning the video, Tom wrote: “Here’s an awesome way to help your kids understand why we need to wash our hands.

“Saw a teacher do this with her class and thought I’d show my kids. Spreading knowledge, not germs!”

His post has received more than 8,600 ‘likes’ and over 2,300 shares.

One person commented: “This is such a clever idea, I salute you.”

Another shared: “Totally doing this with my six and three-year-old tomorrow.... Awesome!”

A third added: “I am a grown adult and I have just tried this. Excellent!”

It comes as Mariah Carey, 49, taught her two children – eight-year-old son Moroccan and eight-year-old daughter Monroe – to wash their hands properly while singing along to her hit ‘Fantasy’.

In a clip shared to TikTok, and subsequently Twitter, the trio could be seeing dancing around the sink in a very luxurious bathroom.

She wrote: “Washing our hands to 20 seconds of Ol' Dirty Bastard! Stay safe everybody!”

Words by Lauren Clark

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