Did you know that February is Dental Health Month? Ms. Marianne has been looking forward to this unit all year long. :) It has so many fun activities and learning opportunities in it. We talked all about teeth this week- and we'll continue to do so next week as well. 
We started by taking a look at our own teeth. We tried to count how many we have (20 baby teeth should be in our mouths) using a mirror. We discovered our gums and tongues too. Using non-fiction books (and touching again on fiction "make-believe" / "story" books vs. non-fiction- "not a story" / "facts" books) we discovered that the part of the tooth that we can see in our mouths is called the crown of the tooth and the pointed / v-shaped part below the gums is called the root. We were introduced to and got to play with tools that the dentist uses to examine and clean our teeth with. Ms. Marianne told us a story about Tanya & Timmy Tooth- who were sad teeth being exposed to things like soda, ice cream and candy until they were cleaned and started eating things like carrots, broccoli and wheat bread, then they were happy teeth! After listening to her story, we got to use the dental tools to "clean" the bad foods away from Tanya and Timmy tooth so they could be happy teeth. The toothbrush, tongue cleaner, floss, toothpaste, gum scraper and mirror were all useful in making the teeth happy!
To illustrate the Happy Tooth, Sad Tooth idea even more, Ms. Marianne made us special snacks!
They were both yummy, but we could see the difference between clean and unclean teeth... :)
We did a cut and paste activity where we sorted foods into groups that would make our teeth happy and sad and then glued them onto a tooth with a smiley face or frowny face accordingly. One friend said "I don't need to practice my cutting, because I'm already GOOD." hahaha! Well, my friend, practice makes perfect! Cutting is a challenging skill for sure, but we are getting more and more confident with each activity we participate in.
Some of the other activities we did this week included practicing skills we've already learned like the Conversation Heart patterns we made on our own this time by placing the candy hearts in a pattern and then coloring in the hearts on the paper. We're getting to be AMAZING at pattern creation and extending!
We strung laces through holes in teeth- another challenging skill that we'll continue to practice. One friend commented "Oh! This is like lacing a shoe." Good observation! Another friend said to herself: "I sew all the time. Sewing is fun for me. We just have to keep on sewing... keep on sewing!" :) Lacing or "sewing" is great for practicing the pinch and the motor skill of pushing it through the hole and pulling it out the other side and not tangling it. If it does get tangled, then they have to figure out how to untangle it and continue on. Once they're done and all the holes have been laced through, they have to slowly pull the lace back out again. All of these motor skills help with pencil grip, handwriting, tying shoes and manipulating objects in general. One of Ms. Marianne's favorite activities this week was our Marshmallow Mouths. So fun! And they helped us practice our skills of picking up, placing in a straight or curved line and gluing into place.
We also practiced brushing our teeth in "small circles" by using toothbrushes to clean dry erase marker off of laminated teeth...
and practiced flossing our teeth using yarn to get play dough "plaque" from between the "teeth" of a Duplo block... an activity Ms. Marianne found here.
We reviewed our letters and sounds by serving up some "Alphabet Soup". Each of us had a dish that Ms. Marianne ladled letters from our "soup" into. If we could tell Ms. Marianne the name and sound of the letter we were served, we got to keep it. Whomever had the most soup at the end of the game won! Our letter of the week was Yy. We're so close to the end of being introduced to all of the letters of the alphabet! Only 3 more letters to go.
Finally- for Science, we finished up our Candy Hearts Science activities by predicting the outcome of putting Conversation Hearts into different liquids. Ms. Marianne brought out three small glasses- one with vinegar, one with water and one with juice. She had us predict what we thought would happen to the candy hearts that we dropped into them. For vinegar, we predicted it would dance (yay for connecting to previous activities!), but it dissolved an actually left the shape of a heart on the bottom of the glass and turned the vinegar blue- the color of the heart we dropped in. For water, we predicted that it would sink to the bottom, and we were right! The heart also dissolved and turned the water yellow (the color of that heart). Finally, we predicted that the heart dropped into the juice would get mushy and fall apart. This happened... sort of. We talked about the word dissolved and how it means basically their prediction description. The red juice turned slightly darker too, due to the dye in the green candy heart we dropped in. We made observations as the time passed, and then we formed conclusions when the hearts were completely dissolved. I wonder if the hearts would dissolve in other liquids too...? Maybe we could try to extend this experiment at home too!
day 1
day 2
Next week, we'll continue to learn about teeth- even visiting a real dentist's office on Tuesday!
Love,Your Child
and
Ms. Marianne
ps- many of the printables I used in the Dental Health Unit can be found here at 3 Dinosaurs, at 2 Teaching Mommies, and at Pre-K Fun.
