Sterilizer

For those of us who have students who put items in their mouths we need a method to make sure those items are as free of germs as possible. When I worked in a hospital school we ran everything through the industrial dish washer or put certain items into the autoclave. In public school we tended to use soap and water, a disinfectant like a 10 part water to 1 part bleach solution or a microwave sanitizer. Recently I have moved my classroom to a counter top steam sterilizer.

Made for baby bottles or toothbrushes these sterilizers sell from thirty to one hundred dollars in discount, drug and department stores. Even specialty oral motor stores like ARK sell them for their products. We have the First Years all purpose steam version in our room, chosen for the automatic shut off, size and the fact that the oral motor tools fit nicely into the slots for the baby bottle nipples. However the Phillips Avent, shown above, is higher rated than the one we have, if you care about such things. In the end I hope we are all at least thinking about how we are de-germing (to completely make up my own word) all of those oral motor tools and other items that end up in our kiddos mouthes.