How do you explain how vaccinations work to kids?

Answer 1

It depends somewhat on the age of the child. The most simple explanation for a child could be something like:

A vaccine is a medicine that can keep germs from making you sick. You take this medicine ahead of time, when you are not sick, so if the germ ever comes around, your body already knows how to fight it before the germ can make you sick.

The way it knows how to do that is with a vaccination. The vaccination shows your body exactly what that germ looks like. Then your body makes up some of its own medicine that can kill that exact germ. It keeps the medicine to kill that germ in storage. It will use it if it ever sees that germ trying to give you an infection.

This makes it all easier and quicker for your body to fight the germ before the germ can make you sick. It can do it faster after the vaccination because it already has the matching medicine stored up. It doesn't have to start from scratch.

Answer 2

It makes the body create memory cells for future infections.

OR

It creates a small infection to help the body fight later infections.

-Pelican