Six-year-old Evan Ferrell stood zombie-style, boasting clean palms and demanding his first-grade classmates not touch him.

Evan didn't want to contaminate his freshly washed and mostly germ-free hands, which he had just observed beneath a special light.

Hand-washing experts visited first-graders Tuesday at Roanoke's Grandin Court Elementary School for a timely lesson in personal hygiene as flu season looms and incidences of illness related to the novel H1N1 virus are on the rise regionally.

"Obviously hand-washing is the number one behavior people can do to prevent disease, especially swine flu," said Stuart Tousman, a health psychology professor at Jefferson College of Health Sciences.

Getting to the children early and instilling the behavior is important, Tousman said at Tuesday's Happy Healthy Cooks event.

Alise Culbertson of Lewis-Gale Physicians used the Glitterbug Handwash Show, a portable ultraviolet lamp, to demonstrate the importance of hand-washing to Angie Sweetenberg's first-grade class. She gave the students a special gel to put on their hands that makes dirt and germs glow white under the light.

"My top wasn't that dirty but when I flipped them over there was all kinds of stuff," said Tyler Crabb, 6.

After the children saw the glowing germs, Culbertson sent them to wash their hands with these tips:

• Wet hands, use soap and lather for 20 seconds.
• Sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" while you wash.
• Bubbles are good.
• Remember areas between fingers and around the nails.
• Rinse downward.

"The number one way of not getting sick is [to] wash your hands," Culbertson said.

After the suds, the children put their hands under the light again to see where they forgot to scrub.

Not every student fully grasped what he or she saw beneath the special light.

"I saw lots of fake germs," 6-year-old Owen Himmel said.

But most students knew getting rid of germs helps them stay healthy.

The only other question was how long those little hands would stay clean.

"Until this thing is over," Evan said matter-of-factly. "Because after this is recess."

Happy Healthy Cooks is a program operated and funded by parents and volunteers at Grandin Court. The weekly 45-minute lessons focusing on cooking will be taught in all three first-grade classes. Coordinator Heather Quintana said $2,500 has been raised to buy the materials.