Kristen Bell Shares Viral “Pepper Trick” To Help Kids Wash Their Hands

It’s a little stressful trying to teach our kids the importance of washing their hands. They just want to run to the next activity, but right now, it’s more important than ever for all of us to be washing our hands with soap and water. It’s the number one recommended way to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and Kristen Bell shares how the “pepper trick” can help our kids grasp the importance of washing hands to keep a virus away. It’s smart and here’s how it works.

Kristen Bell shared a video on her social media of a teacher in Miami, teaching a child the importance of handwashing, especially in terms of preventing the spread of a virus. Bell said the lesson is “important” and is hoping other parents will share this trick. Pre-school teacher Amanda Lorenzo is showing off a “pepper trick” that emulates how handwashing works with keeping viruses away.

She has one of her students dip their fingertip into a bowl of water containing pepper (which is acting as the virus), she has the child dip their finger into the bowl, noting that the pepper didn’t move, other than the child had some flakes of pepper on her hand.

Next, she has the child dip that same finger into a second bowl, this time, it’s filled with soap. The pepper washes off and the teacher has the child place the same finger back into the bowl containing pepper. What we see is the pepper in the water reacts, it moves as far away from the finger with soap on it as possible.

“You see how important it is to wash our hands?” Lorenzo says back to her student. It’s easy to see why this lesson resonates well with kids. A virus isn’t something we can see, and this pepper trick puts that into a visual representation for them.