Dental Health

February is Dental Health Month. Through out the week we talked about importance of brushing and take care of your teeth and mouth. Following are some of the activities we did.

Teeth Counting Game:
(For small group)


This idea is from From the Hive

We made mouth using pink cardstock, cutting it in oval and folding it in half. We drew 10 circles on each half (Children have 20 teeth). The game was to roll the dice, read the number, put equivalent marshmallow teeths on their mouth mat.

Find the "T" words. 

(for Large groups)

This idea is also from From the Hive

 

We printed some words that begin with /T/ sound and some that did not. Students had to identify the picture and then tell if it begun with the /T/ sound or not. We glued those pictures on the Tooth, the others were discarded. Click HERE for the pictures we used.

Brush Brush Game:
(For small group)


This game is from Pre-K Pages

Brush Brush Game. Picture from Pre-K Pages

This game could be used to play with sight words, letters or numbers. We did alphabet recognition. We took a teeth clipart, expanded it to full page and printed off 5 copies to make 5 different bingo like mats and made copies of each of the mat. This way each child in the small group would have a different mat. I am sorry I do not have pic of it :(( I promise will become better about it :) We printed small teeth and hand wrote alphabets on them and Brush! Brush! on 3 cards. They sang Brush your teeth by Raffi if they picked that card.

Counting Cavities:

(For Small group-Independent, Math Center)

Idea from Sorting Sprinkles

Counting Cavities, Picture from Sorting Sprinkles

We took tooth clipart and printed 20 teeths. On each tooth, I made cavities (small black circles) and laminated them. Students had to count the cavities and write the number on it using Expo Marker. I also provided them with copies of number as they are still learning how to write them. 

Sorting Sprinkles also has a link to "Brushing Your Teeth" sequencing. This is another large group activity we did for students to understand sequencing, how activities happen in a certain order.

Good or Bad for my Teeth Sorting

( For Large Group or Small Group)

Idea from Creative Preschool Resources

The blog linked about has PDF file of food items which can be sorted into good or bad for teeth. We created 2 tooths-one happy, one sad. Then we looked at each food item and decided if it was good or bad for our teeth. When we came to citrus foods, we talked about how it has something called acid and it removes the enamel layer of our tooth. 

Whose smile is it Book.

 (for Phonological Awareness)

Again I am not sure where I saw this idea and apologies to the person who originally shared this for being unable to mention you here. But we do thank you for this awesome little book. Click students pictures, just their smile and teeth. I got them printed and glued them on sized construction paper. Put all the pictures together to make a book. I then wrote "This smile belongs to _________." During PA time, we looked at the pictures, and kids immediately guessed who smile it was. I then wrote the names. Then we choral read the book.

Ms. A. created a Smile Book too. For her book, she just cut out the mouth area and in cute lip shape :)) I forgot to click a picture of her book.... but it looked super cute!

For Phonological Awareness, we also did a poem, "Brush Brush Your Teeth" from Alaboon. It is sung to Row row your boat. It is a super cute song and Pre-K 4 enjoyed singing it and we sang it everyday twice a day ;)

Ms. S from Pre-K 3 happened to have a video on brushing your teeth, so that was something exciting to watch. The video was by Colagate and is for children. Students loved watching  Dr. Rabbit who showed the right steps for brushing teeth.

Dental Word Wall Words-Click HERE

This is all for this week.

Until next time,

Cheers!

The Mitten Reenactment

 In Pre-K, "Retelling a story" is an important standard. Retelling can be done by simply recalling scenes from the story, or drawing a picture or reenactment using props. We decided to reenact "The Mitten".

The Mitten by Jan Brett is a very good book to read and is perfect if your theme of the week is "Winter". It is a story about a little boy who looses a mitten in snow and some animals make that mitten their home until the mitten stretches and pops. It is a cute little story about winter animals trying to get ready for their long sleep! There are few versions of this title.... and most of them have similar animals. 

We got our masks from Jan Brett's website . All you have to do is print them, laminate for longevity and use them. Pre-K 4 kiddos enjoyed it..... We did not have Jan Brett's version. Our version had just 5 animals, so we had to do this reenactment several times in order to give everyone a chance. 

Our version book came with CD. So we listened to the story during large group time. At this time we retold story by sequencing the events in the story. 

Later in the day, we did reenactment. We sat in a circle, and the 5 masked animal friends waited while Ms. J read the story.

As the animals were called, they got into the mitten (Blanket for us).

 We insisted they hold their masks up.... just for fun!! and the picture too ;)

As the mitten popped.. all the animals jumped out of the blanket and went back to their spots.

Kiddos loved waiting for each animal to get under the blanket and then for all 5 to pop out.... for them that was the most exciting part. However, 5 rounds later...... all kiddos could retell the story :D

A simple thing like reenactment makes learning so much fun. Lucky for us it was super cold that day, so this was perfect activity to keep us busy during our outside play time. 

Besides masks, using puppets or pictures glued on popsicle sticks make retelling fun!!

Until next time,

Cheers =)