Brush and Floss

We are a little behind in getting our Dental Unit done for the month of February.  We had four days out of school because of a snow storm that hit our area so that caused some problems with lesson planning.  Anyway, full speed ahead and we arrived at our Dental Unit the first week of March (right before our Spring Break).  The students had a wonderful time learning about their teeth and how to take care of them. I had to make the lesson unit a lot shorter because of the days off but the students still enjoyed it.  Here are a few of the things that we did......

The students were given tiny marshmallows that represented their teeth. Then they glued (with white glue not gluesticks) their marshmallow teeth onto the diagram that was given to them. We had to let the teeth dry over night before beginning our lesson on flossing.  This way the teeth were hard and the glue was completely dry.





Here she is flossing away. The students really enjoyed this hands-on lesson about taking care of your gums. After we were finished with flossing, we talked about what would happen if we didn't brush our teeth. The students came up with some good perdictions of what they think would happen. So our next activity was this.....

The students each received a hard boiled egg which represented their tooth/teeth.  I gave each one of them a cup to put the egg into. We poured Coke into each of the cups and we let the egg/tooth sit in the Coke for the weekend. When we got back on Monday, the students couldn't believe how gross the inside of the cup looked. We talked about what would happen if we didn't brush our teeth for a long period of time and the students agreed, with all the junk that we eat, our teeth would probably look like our egg,

brown and ugly. 

Each of the students took their cup and removed their egg/tooth.  Now came the magic....................... I talked to the students about what we could do to make this egg/tooth healthy again AND of course they said, "Brush the egg/tooth.".  I gave each of the students a toothbrush with a small cup of water and some toothpaste. They began brushing their egg, and what do you know, their egg/tooth started to become white again.

They were so excited.  When the students got finished, we looked at our egg/tooth again and we talked about the appearance of it. Was the egg/tooth as white as it was before we started this activity? And of course the answer is "No". It is white but with a hint of discoloration to the egg/tooth.  This is when we really talked about the importance of keeping our teeth and gums clean.

 

I hope you enjoyed reading about this lesson. It was a lot of fun with the students. They love doing hands-on activities especially if they can get their hands dirty.

 

Until Next Time,

         Happy Blogging