Dental Health Printable Activities
To go along with children's dental health month, we found two great printable mini-units – one from Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants! and one from Kristen at First Grade Teaching. Here are a few of our favorite activities:
Tooth Fairy Application
Help your kindergarteners brush up on their handwriting and writing skills with this fun tooth fairy application designed by Rachelle. The printable worksheet is adorable and the questions are sure to provoke some cute answers! Our favorite questions - “what will you do with all the teeth you collect?” and "why will you make a good tooth fairy?".
Another printable designed by Rachelle, your students will not only “brush up” on the proper way to brush teeth, they'll be introduced to the concept of sequencing, build writing skills, and strengthen handwriting techniques. Have students illustrate each step in the process or bring in a digital camera to capture them acting out the steps.
Please Lose A Tooth! Emergent Reader
This emergent reader designed by Kristen combines cutesy clip art images and rhyming prose that your students are sure to love! Read the story as a class, then invite your students to use their imagination to draw what they think the tooth fairy looks like and where she/he lives when not collecting teeth. In 20th Century Fox's “The Tooth Fairy”, Dwayne Johnson's character uses tools like shrinking paste, invisible spray, amnesia dust, 'cat away', and dog bark peppermints to carry out his mission as the tooth fairy. Invite your students (individually or in groups) to design a tool to make the tooth fairy's job a little bit easier, then have them present their inventions to the class.
While your kindergartners may have practiced measuring with rulers and measuring tapes, it's doubtful they've figured out how many “teeth long” an object is. In this second printable designed by Kristen, students are given teeth cutouts and invited to measure and record the length of several dental hygiene items – toothpaste tube, toothbrush, mouthwash bottle, and dental floss container – in “teeth units”. A fantastically fun twist on measuring! When finished, have students get together in small groups to compare answers, remeasuring to settle any discrepancies.
