Teeth Brushing Experiment
This is one of mine and my kids FAVORITE themes to teach each year. We have so much fun talking about our teeth and how to keep them healthy. There are 2 main books I use as the basis of this week (Although there are several out there).
Jungle Mouth is the first book I use, and BEST book for this theme. My kids are so focused when reading it. It talks about a boy who is getting ready for bed. His Mom tells him to brush his teeth, and he doesn’t. He ends up growing a jungle in his mouth!
We do a week long experiment using eggs (white shelled). These are a symbol of our teeth. We add one egg to plain clean water, and one egg to soda. We leave them in all week (we are not “brushing our teeth”) and observe them each day. Some years I’ve also done an egg with juice, or milk, but I just stuck with 2 this year. The point of this experiment is that your white shelled egg will have turned brown and developed cracks from not brushing.
Interestingly, this is the first year where the plain water egg cracked! Typically I use this one as the example for “brushing your teeth”. I had to think quick on my feet. I explained to the kids, that even though there was clean water, and we didn’t have sugar, we still need to brush with toothpaste the same way we wash our hands with soap, and not just water.
Brush The “Teeth” Activity
This activity is another one I do each year. This year I roped it into both, Jungle Mouth and I Brush My Teeth. It is a cute, short, rhythmic book for how to brush your teeth.
I find that my kids are more engaged when my activities are “decorated”, so I grabbed a piece of green paper as the base and threw some vines I had on the table. We pretended that our “teeth” had jungle mouth and then we used the rhymes from I Brush My Teeth to clean them!
I used ice cube trays, black paint, soapy water, and tooth brushes.
Other Health Resources
Find the cavity Boom Cards – Digital Learning game
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