Dental Health lesson

When we reached the chapter on digestion, I had all sorts of plans for what I was going to do, and then this fall hit and most of them didn’t happen.  I was very happy our dental health lesson did happen, because my kids are abysmal at brushing their teeth, so I made a point to show them this one.

 

Supplies for this dental health lesson:

egg carton (foam works best for this), poster paint, play dough, yarn, and paint brush (forgot that in my original picture)

Set up: cut out part of an egg carton, about half a dozen egg shells is about perfect.  Since some of my egg cartons had already been used by overly eager kids for crafting, they got random amounts.

On the carton paint stains on the “teeth” using poster paint, and then put play dough between the different egg shells (is that the proper term? egg holes? egg cases?).

Next to set up with the kids talk about the importance of proper teeth care, brushing, flossing and all of that.

Then show them the challenge, to remove all of the stains from the “teeth” using the provided supplies.

At this point my kids were quite happy, Mom-sanctioned messes, that’s always a hit.

First they happily flossed with the yarn and got the play dough off.  That was the easy part.

Then they started “brushing their teeth,” and they loved dipping the brushes into the water and scrubbing their teeth.  The paint came off easier than I expected.  I had a back up lesson planned about how some foods permanently stain teeth if the paint hadn’t come off, but it wasn’t needed.

 

All told, I think the lesson took 30 minutes from start to finish.  The kids spent several days talking about how to best care for their teeth, but I need to familiarize them with it again because they aren’t really remembering their teeth brushing as well now.

 

Since Phyllis and I switched hosting, I’m linking up to Science Sunday over at All Things Beautiful.