Your kids may not balk at cleaning up, but it’s sometimes difficult impossible to entice my toddler to wash her hands with actual soap and water. Hence, I carry a five-gallon tub of hand sanitizer gel with me at all times.

MomCentral (founded by author Stacy DeBroff, who wrote one of my all time favorite parenting books, The Mom Book) sent me a new fun hand soap for my daughters to try. Yes, as far as soap goes this was a banner event! (Pssst ... the rubbery squid is removable and makes a handy bracelet for mermaid wannabes.)

SquidSoap is made by Airborne and is designed to teach kids proper hand washing. The specially designed pump stamps the palm of your child’s hand with a small vegetable dye dot that takes about twenty seconds of thorough hand washing to remove. It takes the guesswork out of whether or not your kids have washed their hands thoroughly.

The girls love it and my youngest actually would not stop washing her hands the first day we broke out the soap. You can find SquidSoap at most major retailers, such as Target, CVS, and WalHell, I mean WalMart. With perpetual snot season nigh upon us, you might want to check it out if your kids crank up the whine when you ask them to wash their hands.

P.S. This would be great for a preschool or kindergarten class, too, where runny noses are a dime a dozen.