Personal hygiene is the care that every human being requires to keep the body in a positive and healthy state. Moreover, personal hygiene is understood as actions by which people attend to out cleanliness and our appearance. Taking care of hygiene is a big responsibility, and each person has to take care of his own. Because of this, the family is the first nucleus where the child learns to know about hygiene and cleanliness habits.
Hygiene has an essential place in our lives, and thanks to it we create good health habits and prevent diseases. For this reason, it is important and necessary that children are taught personal hygiene tasks from a very early age, with the aim of making this personal cleanliness a fixed moment in their daily live. Furthermore, by acquiring some habits of hygiene, it Will help them to know their own body and to give them security and a sense of independence.
The World Health Organization (1999) gives a very relevant and appropriate definition of Health Education in our society: “Health education comprises consciously created learning opportunities that involve a form of communication aimed at improving health literacy, including improving people´s knowledge of health and developing personal skills leading to individual and community health.
Related to our field, Early Childhood Education, at this stage health education is a major axis for the formation of students.
Likewise, Gómez (2002) emphasizes that in the moment of elaborating educational programs that are dedicated to health, it is essential that teachers take advantage of daily moments to learn and reflect on health.
To this end, schools should put this topic first, since many illnesses require adequate hygiene habits for the health of the person and, furthermore, for their contagion.
Authorship
Elena Pérez Bengochea y Naiara Ruisoto Lavín, 2020.