A great lesson to teach children about how germs spread

I heard about this "lesson" years ago and it sounded so interesting and unique that I still tell people about it today. A first year teacher wanted to do something so her students could really "see" how germs spread. The only problems is that germs are microscopic, so the dilemma was how to illustrate this concept in a way that young children could easily understand. So this teacher decided to get some different colors of glitter. She then had the children put their shaking hand in one of the colors of glitter. After they had done this they went around the room shaking each others hands, noticing that each time they did some of the glitter was transferred from their hands to the hands of the other students and vice versa. By the end each students hand was covered in all the colors of glitter. She explained that this was how germs spread. The students could easily see that indeed, the "germs" had spread. Next she told the kids to use water to try to get the glitter of their hands. Using only water some of the glitter did indeed come off, yet much still remained. After this she had each student use soap and the hand scrubbing method to get the glitter off. Finally they used paper towels to dry their hands. Now all the glittery germs were gone! A fun lesson that I think the children will remember for a long time to come.