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.