Dental Health Kindergarten Activities
Dental health kindergarten activities enable children to learn about the structure of teeth, how the teeth are positioned in the mouth, take care of teeth and what happens to teeth if they're not taken care of properly. Explain the importance of teeth to our digestive system and our ability to form and communicate words. By using fun activities to teach dental hygiene, you can alleviate some of the anxiety children feel about going to the dentist.
Tooth Terms
Create the pattern of a tooth to form a chart that you can hang in the room. Label the parts of the tooth, which include the root, pulp, nerves, dentin and enamel. Make copies of the chart. Hand a tooth pattern to each student. Have them glue their patterns to a piece of construction paper. Ask them to color and write down the name for each part of the tooth. Hand out gloss or white yarn that students can form into the tooth's nerves and glue them on to their tooth patterns. Pin their teeth on to a bulletin board.
Making Teeth
Divide the students into three groups. Ask the first group to flatten marshmallows to make incisors. Instruct the second group to flatten and snip the corners of the marshmallows to create canines. Direct the third group to make indents in the molars by pushing a small wad of paper into the middles of the marshmallows. Have them glue the three types of teeth in a semi-circle in the correct order on pink construction paper. This will represent the inside of the mouth.
Why Teeth Are Vulnerable
Give each child an apple and tell them to pretend it is a tooth. Ask them to use their pencils to poke a hole in the apple. Explain to the students that we get cavities when we don't brush and floss our teeth. Explain that we should eat in healthy ways and schedule regular visits to our dentists. Have the students place their apples on a shelf in the science center. Hand out word strips and ask them to stick their names on their apples. Ask the children to write down their observations of what happens to their apples during the course of a week. At the end of the experiment, ask students if they want their teeth to look like their apples.
Caring for Teeth
Pair the students and have them face one another. Designate one student as the tooth and the other as the flosser. Give the flosser a piece of yarn. Model wrap the yarn around two forefingers to achieve a steady grip. Ask the student who is the tooth to hold his hands up with fingers spread. Ask the flosser to scrape the sides of the other student's fingers, using an up and down motion. Switch the students so that everyone has a chance to floss. Hand out dental floss. Direct students to practice flossing their teeth in the same way they used the yarn.
Tags: their apples, their teeth, construction paper, Dental Health, Dental Health Kindergarten, group flatten
