It's that time of year to teach and review dental health to your primary students. I see you, kindergarten, first grade, and second grade teachers. Let's get you some activities and resources to help you make dental health month fun!
First, you'll find videos on visiting the dentist, how to brush our teeth properly, why we even brush our teeth, and finally how our teeth work and wiggly teeth.
So, you have all the videos. Then, what about some engaging, kid-friendly activities? Well, keep scrolling down past the videos to see more fun stuff.
Videos
Presentation slides
At the beginning, start a conversation about the foods that are good and not so good for teeth with this slideshow. As you go, you'll find lots of interesting information about the benefits of the good foods, and why teeth dislike certain foods. As always, there are additional reminders to brush and floss no matter what we eat.
Not only is this presentation a PDF file, but this can easily be projected to the whole class. Since the videos above helped with teaching students how to keep teeth healthy, then you'll need more information about foods teeth need to stay healthy. Specifically, you'll find lots of information about why each food is good or bad for teeth. As usual, kid-friendly clip art helps to easily engage elementary students.
Activities
At the end of the presentation, students will discuss the foods to be listed in the last slide. Now, they'll determine foods that are good or bad for our teeth. After this, students can do the cut, sort and glue activity with ease.
In addition, students use their pencil like a toothbrush. In other words, they'll follow the path across the tooth on the page to get rid of all the bad fuzzies left behind that cause cavities. As soon as they get through the maze, they'll arrive next to the healthy and smiling mouth full of clean teeth. Coupled with this is even an optional dot-to-dot that goes as high as 30 that allows students to make their own outline of a big tooth.
At last, encourage students to draw and write about good foods and healthy habits on the tooth puzzle pieces. This gives students a chance to show the healthy things they like to eat and tools they use daily to keep their teeth healthy and clean. To conclude their learning, they can cut out their puzzle and trade with another student to put together another puzzle to see all the ways their friends take good care of their teeth.