A week on Dental Care and our Teeth

Did you know that February is National Dental Month!  So, we're doing a week on our teeth!  Our letter is Oo, as in open up wide.

Science - Tooth Decay - We talked about our teeth and how they have this nice white, hard enamel on the outside.  We talked about how that makes our teeth strong, but if there gets to be a crack or a hole in it, yuckies can get in.  To show this, we cut a hole in an apple.  We're going to let it sit out all week and see what yuckies start to grow in the hole.

Day #1:

Here is our apple after a couple of days of decay...

Happy Tooth, Sad Tooth - We talked about foods that are good for our body and foods, though yummy, that are not good for our body.  The kiddos sifted through foods clipped from the grocery adds to create their collage.

Here they are!  We talked about the need to brush our teeth twice a day, to keep them clean and healthy.

Science - Teeth Staining - We talked about how some foods can stain our teeth.  Soda is one of those foods.  So we decided to try an experiment.  We put hard boiled eggs in cups of soda.  Right away we could see that the soda was staining the eggs (the white egg shells are kinda like our teeth).  We're going to leave them all week, then we'll see if we can brush them clean.

And here are our eggs soaking in soda.  We'll brush them on Friday and see if we can get them clean.  Perhaps we should have tried to brush today also, to show that the longer they sit, the harder they are to get clean.

Brushing Our Egg Teeth - It was finally time to pull our egg teeth out of the soda and see if we could brush them clean.  The kiddos were amazed at how dyed the egg teeth were.  They had to use quite a bit of tooth paste and work to get the egg teeth clean.

We found that the root beer stained egg teeth were the hardest to clean and the orange soda egg teeth were the easiest.  We also found that the grape soda and the root beer left sugar crystals on the eggs.

Snack - Smiley Apples - You have to have smiley apples when learning about teeth!

Magnifying Glasses - Always fun.  This kiddo was checking out the globe.

Chalk Board - The preschool was donated this chalk board.  The boys had quite a bit of fun drawing traps for bad guys (which they also love to do in their journals) and discussing in detail how the bad guys meet their demise.

Science - Mouth Models - We reviewed the digestive system and the important part our teeth play in it (chewing our food and mixing it with saliva that starts the break down process).  I told them that kiddos just have 20 teeth!  10 on top, and 10 on bottom.  We decided to make our model (play dough and lima beans). 

 

 I got this fabulous idea from:  this source.

Tooth Cleaning - The kiddos "brushed" their tooth clean with white paint.  We talked again about the importance of brushing our teeth at least twice a day.

Captain Tooth Brush!  -  We made a tooth brush super hero who is here to help the kiddos remember to brush their teeth.  The catch phrase:  "Brush your teeth twice a day!"  

Princess Pirates - The princesses took control of the pirate ship.  I always love to see crossover play.

Marshmallow Mouths - We were a bit silly and created mouths with marshmallow teeth.

 The kiddos enjoyed the gluing and the munching (hopefully not in that order, ha!).

 

Cotton Ball Teeth - Toddlers - The kiddos made these teeth extra cute by adding a bit of fluff to them.

Learning Station - Cleaning Teeth - Toddlers

The kiddos dirtied up their teeth with some marker, then they brushed them clean with water and a toothbrush.

 The kiddos really enjoyed this activity.  I saw this activity on Pinterest.

Learning Station - Dominoes

Today the kiddos played dominoes with a bit of help from Ms. Sara.   We worked on counting, turn taking and cheering our friend on when they won. 

New - Listening Center

Our church was cleaning out their library and I found this fabulous old tape recorder!  I dug out all the books on tape (I just couldn't part with them after my daugher grew out of them.  I'm glad now I didn't!)  This is a favorite book of the kiddos, so I thought it would be a good one to start with.

 The kiddos loved it, though it took some explaining.

Learning Station - Abc Teeth

With dry erase markers, the kiddos drew plaque and yucky stuff on the teeth.  Then they pulled a letter out of the bag, found it in the mouth and then brushed it clean.  As they worked we talked about letter sounds as well as letter names.

 Each tooth has an upper and lower case letter on it.

I found this fabulous idea on pinterest, it was just a photo.

A week with Chinese New Year!

Thursday is Chinese New Year!  So this week we are learning a bit about China and their culture and beliefs about a new year.  This is the year of the goat, so our letter is Gg.

Journal Time - The kiddos used red (lucky color in China) markers in their journals today.  They also munch a fortune cookie or two and watched some dragon and lion dancing.  Cool stuff.

Paint Dryer - Ms. Sara found this awesome laundry hanger at Ikea ... perfect for drying paint pictures!  I hung it down low so the kiddos could pin their own pictures.

Beading Good Fortune - I set out red and gold beads for kiddos to make good fortune necklaces. 

Good Fortune Collage - The kiddos created a collage using red and gold items.  It turns out "red violet" paint is closer to magenta then red.  Ha.

Snack - We enjoyed Raumen noodles with chopsticks and a few other treats I found at the Asian market...

Class Visitor - A kiddo's mom came into class to share some of her Chinese culture with us.  She told us the story of why red and gold are lucky colors and why we bang pots and make noise as the new year begins.  She also shared a beautiful red banner with New Year wishes on it and red envelopes with real lucky money!  Thanks so much!

Chinese Slat Book - The first books created by the Chinese people were slat books, they tied wood pieces together and then folded the book up for storage.  They wrote down each slat instead of across like a page.

The kiddos enjoyed the chance to create a story.  They could use Chinese characters for writing or draw pictures.

The book (above) was about pirates, the book (below) was about a girl and her mother.

A couple of the boys were super excited to create a ninja book.  Here is our new ninja book that they followed...

The book (above) followed the story of the ninja book.  He had me write in text as he drew the pictures.  The book (below), you can see he was writing text and then had me add some more for him.

As you can guess, we worked quite a long time on our slat books.  I was pleased with the kiddo's interest and hard work.

I got the idea for the slat book from:  this source.

Collage Dragons - We looked at some pictures of Chinese dragons, then we created our own.

 I got this idea from:  this source.

Learning Station - Chinese Writing

While the Chinese do not have an alphabet like ours, I found a pseudo alphabet that gave the kiddos the chance to "write" their name in Chinese.

 I am sorry, I neglected to grab the website information of where I found the alphabet.

A week on Valentine's

Poor Snow Cave! - I really thought we'd still have walls this morning ... but alas, no.

Our Valentine Folders - The kiddos decorated folders to house their valentines.

Folder Computers - Right as I handed a few of the boys their folder, they wanted to create a computer with it.  So we made a deal, they could make a computer once their valentine folder was done.  They worked for quite a while.  They even added a mouse.  See how the hearts are their keyboards and white paper for their screens.  Pretty nice inventing.

Valentine Making - I have set out a whole bunch of things for the kiddos to create valentines with.  I also wrote out names for the kiddos to follow.

Science - Tie Dye Hearts - Color Mixing - We started this by coloring all over a coffee filter.  The kiddos then sprayed them with water, watching the colors blend together.   Somehow I didn't get a picture of these.  They turned out great.  Once they were dry, I just cut them into a heart shape.  I found this idea at:  this source.

Stained Glass Heart Cookies - We made sugar cookies and dropped a jolly rancher in the center, then backed them like normal!

 One kiddo ate the cookie, then wondered how to eat the "glass".  Ha!

Parent Valentines -

Poop! - How exciting!  The kiddos discovered deer poop in the backyard!  We do get a lot of deer throughout the winter.   It was perfect to follow up our discussion on the digestive system last week and that everybody poops.  Also, to notice that animals make different kinds of poop.

Sidewalk Chalk - I love it when it starts warming up enough to do sidewalk chalk.  This kiddo did his very own heart!

Heart Necklace - The kiddos laced hearts and straws onto their necklaces.  They turned out super cute!  I just punched hearts from scrap paper.

 This cutie wanted a feather on hers, so we taped it on.

Love You To Pieces - Toddlers - The kiddos loved gluing hearts all over their paper.  

Matching Shoes! - So fun to match with the kiddos!  Usually it's just our hair (braid or a pony tail), but today I matched with shoes!

 

Science - Melting Kisses - Or in our case, Hugs.  We talked about ways we could melt our Hug chocolate with our hands.  We tried friction - warming up our hands by rubbing them together, we tried heating up our hands by jumping, then we tried putting our hands in front of the heater.  We also thought the sun could warm us up if it was summer time.    I found this idea at:  this source.

 

Monster Love Pencil Toppers - The kiddos created monsters on the top of their valentine pencils.    I found this idea at:  this source.