Unique and engaging ways to promote dental hygiene with your preschool children!
February is National Dental Health month and the children in our preschool class always enjoy the process of brushing their teeth…
Enjoying a Special Visitor
To celebrate our teeth, the dentist came to visit us and she shared a few good tips on how to take care of our teeth…
Exploring Dental Hygiene
We learned that it is important to brush behind our teeth and to brush all the way up to our gums so our gums stay strong and healthy. We also learned that brushing our teeth should be done after we eat snacks and meals…
To put our tooth brushing lesson into action, the children explored two types of tooth brushing centers. The first tooth brushing center was our egg carton teeth water play area.
I shared about this idea last year and I am here to tell you that if you haven’t tried brushing egg carton teeth then you are missing out!
Practicing Proper Technique
Our students love, love, love this process and many of the children brushed and brushed until we finally ran out of time and toothpaste…
Through the tooth brushing center the children practice squeezing the toothpaste and putting it on a toothbrush; brushing back and forth and all around the ‘teeth’; rinsing the toothbrush and ‘teeth’ off in the water; and a little time is spent on flossing, too…
An Artful Experience
In our second tooth brushing center the focus wasn’t on art, although it was an artful experience, but instead on different types of brush strokes like up and down or going round in circles…
This is commonly known as the familiar process of toothbrush painting which is a super fun process to introduce to your students. As our students explored the process we were able to stop by and say “I can see how you are brushing up and down on your paper by looking at the strokes of paint on your paper. Are there any other ways you might move your brush if you were going to clean your teeth?”…
The children were invited to choose colors of paint and put the colors on a paper plate to dip their toothbrush in but it didn’t take long for the children to decide that putting the paint right on the toothbrush was more fun and it looked more like real toothpaste…
One little guy told me that the toothpaste he used at home has three colors and he set out to put three colors of paint on his toothbrush…
Why we Love these Invitations to Explore
The tooth brushing stations gave our students fun, inviting, and hands-on opportunities to explore the process of using a toothbrush. The fine motor skills of squeezing out toothpaste, swishing a toothbrush in water, and scrubbing back and forth with a toothbrush were reinforced all throughout the morning…
The tooth brushing centers also invited rich and meaningful opportunities to promote dental awareness and introduce new vocabulary. While we were at it, we took a few minutes of our day to explore all the amazing colors that toothbrushes come in. Nowadays, toothbrushes come in some pretty cool shapes, colors, and some even have batteries!!
Our toothbrush centers were super fun and although I must bring this post to an end, our exploration in teeth and tooth brushing did go on! Come back tomorrow to see the super fun ‘toothpaste’ science fun Mrs. Courtney had in store for us. After exploring toothpaste science, I heard one little girl say, “That was so much fun!!”
PS. We also made apple smile snacks brought to us by one of our classroom mommies…
What kinds of Dental Day fun have you been having in your home or classroom?
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