Teaching Dental Hygiene To Preschoolers – Welcome to Sugar, Spice & Glitter! Please note that this post may contain affiliate links. For more information, see our full details.
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Teaching Dental Hygiene To Preschoolers
I almost didn’t share this step – it really is too easy! But after sharing our scrubbing dinosaurs to learn how to brush, I know a lot of families struggle with flossing, so I thought I’d share a fun way to teach kids how to brush!
Three Tips For Teaching Preschool Kids To Brush Their Teeth
Ella is doing very well with dental floss – for now we are using these nice ones because they are small and easy for children to use semi-independently. However, we are working on making flossing easy and have discussed why flossing is so important!
This quickie only took a minute to set up and Ella played with it for a good half hour while I made dinner. It invited a great conversation about self-care and why it’s important.
You can use any color of playdough – a bright color might even make it more fun, but I went with white because it was more related to the plaque that Ella sometimes notices on her thread.
Just show your child how to use the thread to remove the play dough, or if they’re a little older and like creative problem solving, leave them alone!
Dental Health Gross Motor Activities
Be available for discussion, but avoid the urge to intrude or comment too much. You know your child best – if you think a supportive comment will be encouraging, go for it! If there’s a chance your interjection might be a distraction, it’s best to leave them alone.
Having children remove the playdough from the middle of the Duplo pegs is a great fine motor experience and shows how important careful threading can be – especially if the child notices that little pieces of playdough are left behind!
If you’re really brave, it would be great to do this activity with tacky glue – just to show you how difficult flossing can be and what happens when you leave plaque on your teeth overnight. I can’t really think of materials that are easy to remove one day and harder to remove the next day – can you?
Would you try this simple activity to teach your kids how to floss? Do your kids like to floss their teeth? February is a great month to talk to your students about dental health. With these kindergarten dental health activities, you’ll be able to talk to your students about caring for their pearly whites while providing them with fun math, literacy, and writing activities.
Cute Dental Care Infographics For Kids. Vector Funny Stomatology Information Poster With Cute Smiling Characters Stock Vector
Educating students early can help set them on the path to good dental hygiene. While they are hopefully taught and encouraged to take care of their teeth at home, it is important that students hear this from more than one source. There’s strength in numbers, right?
Dental health activities in kindergarten can be included in any subject or time of day. It doesn’t just have to be taught during science class or after a special read-aloud.
With this dental health mini unit, you can incorporate the theme of dental health into your day with activities that teach students more about dental hygiene, as well as 10 no-prep math and literacy worksheets.
Students will learn more about the order of brushing, important dental hygiene products, and what foods are healthy and unhealthy for their teeth.
Dental Hygiene: How To Care For Your Child’s Teeth
Plus, there are partner games for fun learning and mini readers that are perfect for students to practice reading at school and at home.
This unit would be perfect to compliment your whole group and small groups in math and literacy classes, science classes, or even center rotations.
Dental health is also a great topic to add to writing lessons and activities. To get students thinking about dental hygiene, you can do this simple DIY writing activity with them.
Students will write a dental health topic writing prompt on lined paper and fill in the blank using their knowledge of dental hygiene. After completing the sentence, students will illustrate to show a dental health habit.
Everything Parents Should Know About Kids’ Oral Care
With February being such a busy month filled with more holidays and topics to teach, it’s nice to have a collection of dental health centers that you can use in your math and literacy lessons.
This 6-pack of dental health-related math and literacy centers is the perfect way to incorporate the topic into your learning. You can use these centers throughout the month or during the week long dental health study.
Although February is Dental Health Month, it’s never a bad time to talk about dental hygiene, so take advantage of these centers any time of year.
Students practice important skills such as addition, subtraction, teen numbers, CVC words, rhyming words and simple sentences while gaining independence and having fun.
Dental Hygiene For Babies And Toddlers
Each center has a recording sheet to help students show what they know. And these busy weeks (more like every week, right?) include 6 extra no-prep math and literacy pages.
To help your students understand what is healthy or unhealthy for their teeth, you can use a simple DIY dental health activity in kindergarten, either in a whole-group setting or in small groups.
To get started, create a basic diagram either on the board or on a piece of graph paper. Write “Healthy for my teeth” on one side and “Not healthy for my teeth” on the other side.
Give each student a sticky note or note card. The teacher then whispers a healthy or unhealthy food into the first student’s ear.
Simple Dental Health Activities For Preschool And Pre K
The student draws a food on his sticky note and places it on the correct side of the chart to show whether it is healthy or unhealthy for his teeth.
You can also have other students help guess where it goes before the student places it on the board.
Alternatively, students can call out healthy and unhealthy foods to add to the list on the board after all the students have left. This encourages them to think of even more foods to add to the chart.
If you don’t want to use sticky notes and have them draw pictures, you could just have students name the foods and say whether they fall on the healthy or unhealthy side of the chart.
Dental Health Activities To Support Learning [+ A Freebie]
Another option is to have students find pictures of food in magazines. They can cut out healthy and unhealthy food choices and organize them into the appropriate categories on the chart.
This kindergarten dental health activity is a fun way for students to test their knowledge in a friendly competition. It also helps build community in the classroom as they work together as a team.
After asking a question, the team will work together to find the answer. If they get the answer right, they get a point. If they don’t get the answer right, the other team gets a chance.
Before starting, it is helpful to discuss with students that they need to agree on one answer as a team.
Preschool Dental Activities For Kids: Teeth Health Art & Craft (models)
You can encourage them to whisper to discuss the question and when they have a team answer, everyone should raise their hand together to show the teacher that they are ready.
To incorporate math skills, you can have each team keep track of their score on the board using markers.
To continue the discussion about dental health and healthy choices, I’ve created a fun dental health picture sorter freebie for you!
This activity is designed to help students identify foods that are healthy and unhealthy for their teeth. This free download includes a sorting mat, picture cards, and an extra recording sheet.
Personal Hygiene Worksheets For Kids
To prepare this activity, simply print, cut, and laminate the sorting mats and picture cards. Print the recording page.
Students will use the sorting mat to sort foods that are healthy for their teeth and foods that are not healthy for their teeth.
They will then color the pictures on the entry sheet to display their work. You can use this activity as a whole group discussion tool or as an additional hub. This would be a great follow up to the DIY chart activity above.
To get a free copy of this dental health picture sorting activity, fill out the form below and it will be delivered right to your inbox!
How To Teach Your Child To Brush Their Teeth
I hope you enjoyed these dental health activities for kindergarten and can use them in your classroom. If you’re looking for dental health information, read alouds, and another fun freebie, be sure to check out this blog post! February is Dental Health Month. It may seem difficult to talk about, but there’s a lot you can do to teach your kids how to take care of their teeth. Exploring dental health is a great activity for kids in your preschool program.
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