Dental Health Activities for Kids • Brush An Egg • Inside of The Tooth • Food Groups
01/06/2019
Today, we are learning about dental health, as well as conducting a science experiment on teeth cleaning. We will also discuss what foods are good for you and your body, and finally, we will peak inside of the tooth.
Happy vs Sad Tooth
We began with discussing what type of foods are good for you, your health, body, energy levels and the hygiene of the mouth. We are using these meal stickers (which include 225+ food and beverage stickers and 15 place settings) and Eyelike 400 reusable Garden stickers (buy similar here).
We talked about dental health and what we can do to improve it by eating foods that are healthy and by brushing and flossing daily. I learned my lesson with Julia when at the age of four, she had eight cavities. So, with Adrian, I was stressing on the importance of dental hygiene early on. So, grab a piece of paper, and draw a 😊happy and a sad ☹️tooth and paste some food stickers! We used a dental tooth model as a visual presentation of the structure of a tooth and a potential cavity decay.
We also talked about food groups, and what is needed to keep the energy levels up and the body happy! For this activity, we used 3D creative vegetable fruits puffy bubble stickers and we discussed the difference between fruits and vegetables. We also used wooden Healthy ~ Not Healthy magnetic foods to practice cutting. To learn about grains, we referred to our favorite Food Anatomy book. To talk about proteins, we read The Science of Tastes - Introduction to Food Chemistry for Kids.
If you noticed, the dairy group is omitted since children were brought up vegan, and they both are in ninety plus percentile of the growth development (both being the tallest amongst their peers and it's not genetic). Once able to make decisions though, I will respect whatever they choose, so nothing is set in stone. While little thought and unable to give an informed consent, I wanted to shy on the safe side.
P.S. fast forward to current times, although Adrian still loves vegan cheese, they do eat dairy e.g regular cheese, and eggs and fish. (👦🏼Adrian's favorite food is oatmeal, while 👧🏻Julia's is Miso soup, and they both love pizza and mac and cheese.)
Teeth Staining Science Project: Brushing An Egg!
Today, we are also conducting a teeth staining and cleaning Science Experiment. What you will need:
- hard boiled egg
- a jar
- dark juice such as grape juice, Coca Cola, coffee, or water stained with black food coloring
- a toothbrush and a toothpaste
This experiment is from Why Fly Guy? book
Soak your hard boiled egg for five hours
Remove the egg from a jar and dry it. What color is it now?
Put some toothpaste on a toothbrush
Offer your child to brush the egg
Adrian kept saying: "Mommy, it takes so long to clean it!" Yes, that is the point! No more five seconds teeth-brushing, I hope. In a Why Fly Guy? book, we learned how bacteria turn the leftover food into acid, burning through thin enamel.
Observe the cleaned egg. The shell of a hard-boiled egg is a lot like a tooth. The grape juice is left behind on the egg, but brushing the egg with the toothpaste makes it clean again! This experiment very concretely shows your child the process of brushing and cleaning teeth! Do give it a try and leave a comment if you did!
Please, see here Adrian's bathroom set up as well as what we are using. (Silicon gum brush and finger brush are perfect for those first teeth!)
Inside of the Tooth
Amazing resource to learn about the human body and how it works is First Human Body Encyclopedia (we love all the "DK" series books).Lastly, we learned what is the tooth made of. We used cross section foam tooth model to learn about the inside of the tooth. The model comes with a pamphlet which explains in details the role each part of the tooth plays.
For more 💉Human BODY Anatomy Unit Study ~ see here.