Fun Dental Health Activities Kindergarten – Free File
- By Deedee Wills
- Updated on January 28
- 8 Comments
Table of Contents
Dental Health Activities Kindergarten
Looking for dental health activities kindergarten fun? You have come to the right place! National Children’s Dental Health Month arrives in February, so if you’re searching for a fun way to teach students about dental care and healthy teeth, I’ve got you covered.
In this blog post, I’ll share a few fun books to add to your dental health theme week and yes, I’m sneaking in a few tooth fairy books too, just because I love them!
From hands-on activities to fun songs, we’ve got a whole range of ideas that will teach students how to take care of their teeth and have a blast doing it. So let’s get started with some fun activities for your dental health unit.
Dental Health Activity – Read Aloud Books
We love Little Critter, and so do preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students! So this week’s close reading lesson plans center are around Mercer Mayer’s book Just Going to the Dentist! (affiliate links). The story follows Little Critter’s trip to the local dentist office, and it’s the perfect, kid-friendly way to open up conversations about what to expect at a dental visit. Your students will giggle, relate, and feel completely at ease jumping into your oral health lessons!
As you know, we use the same book for 5 days to explore various reading comprehension strategies and vocabulary lessons. There is so much rich learning that happens when students revisit a text!
Dental Health Reading Activity Day 1: Prediction
As we read, we pick a spot in the text to pause and let the older children think. We ask students to make a prediction about what will happen next in the story.
Kindergarten and preschool students can draw pictures to show their thinking, while first grade students usually add more text to explain their ideas. It’s such a sweet way to peek inside their minds and see how they’re using clues from the story to make smart guesses!
Dental Health Reading Activity Day 2: Sequencing the Events in the Story
In virtually all of our book lessons, students retell the story events in order. Sequencing is such an important comprehension skill, and it really helps students make sense of the text. We love using picture cards because they support students’ thinking and make retelling feel so manageable.
These cards also come in a PowerPoint version, which works perfectly on an interactive whiteboard. The kids love moving the pieces around, and it makes the whole lesson feel hands-on and interactive!
Once the picture cards are in sequential order, students turn to their partners and practice retelling the story in order. They use transition words like first, next, then, after that, and finally. This oral language practice is so powerful! Partners switch back and forth (with my signal) so everyone gets a turn. Priceless!
Then students move on to their own retelling activity. I attached this one to the Little Critter craft. Making a craft is such a great way to engage students and give them a chance to strengthen their fine motor skills. And honestly… they just love it!
Dental Health Reading Activity Day 3: Making Connections
I’m going to be totally honest with you. I have had panic attacks… and they have ONLY happened in the dental visits. (Tears, hyperventilation, tremors, full-on drama-mama!) So I may not be the best person to model this particular comprehension strategy with little kids.
However, students had NO problem answering the writing prompt. They were ready! Here are a few examples of their responses as they made connections with the story. Their honesty and sweet little perspectives always melt my heart!
Dental Health Reading Activity Day 4: Inferring
We used the illustrations to help us infer how Little Critter was feeling when it was his turn to see the local dentists. The kids picked up on so many emotional clues, those little faces, the body language, all of it! It was such a fantastic way to show them how much information pictures can give us when we slow down and really look.
Dental Health Vocabulary Activities
Each week we choose a few words from the story and dive into our vocabulary study. Here’s a little peek at the anchor chart we create together.
As you can see, we keep track of the words we’ve studied. I like to stack the charts on top of each other so we can flip back and revisit the vocabulary we’ve learned. The kids love seeing how their word knowledge grows week after week!
Learn more about what these vocabulary lessons look like by reading:
You can find all of the activities for this dental health lesson plans by clicking:
TOOTH POEMS
Loose Tooth Poem
Yes, those baby teeth are all falling out in kindergarten. So of course my class loved this tooth poem for the week!
It may not be a dental health song, but it is the perfect way to celebrate our own wiggly teeth and all the excitement that comes with them.
We focus on one poem all week, and students add it to their poetry notebook. They adore flipping back through their collection especially when a poem connects to something happening in real life!
On Friday, we usually do a fluency activity around the poem. This particular week, my students made a Chatterpix video… SO much fun! BONUS: You can save these videos and send them to parents. They absolutely love seeing their little readers in action!
You can learn more about our 5 day fluency plan by clicking:
DENTAL HEALTH SCIENCE EXPERIMENT
Discussing the importance of brushing is also part of our week-long dental health science unit. And this experiment is always a hit! It comes from our Science, Math and More packet and it’s such a simple, hands-on way to help young students understand why brushing matters.
With this activity, young children learn that tooth enamel is similar to an eggshell and WOW, does that visual stick with them! The “aha” moments during this experiment are just the best.
First we soak the eggs in soda overnight.
Then we brush the egg. This is a great ime to to discuss unhealthy foods or drinks (like soda). You can also discuss the healthy habits for good oral hygiene.
Students then document their observations on a recording sheet. This is a hands-on way to show the importance of good dental hygiene habits.
Dental Health Literacy Activities
Dental Health Month is the great time to bring out these dental health vocabulary cards for your writing center! The kids love using real science words in their writing, and it adds such a fun twist to their sentences and stories. It’s amazing how a little themed vocabulary can spark so much excitement and creativity!
These vocabulary cards are used for a variety of writing center response pages, and they are all about taking care of your own teeth! The kids feel so official using real dental words in their writing. It’s amazing how quickly their confidence grows when they have the right vocabulary right at their fingertips!
Here are a few more dental health literacy center ideas. If you click on the images you will find the activity.
Dental Health Simple Sentences
Students put the sentence in order, then write it and illustrate it. It’s such a simple, meaningful way to build sentence sense and they love adding their own little artistic touches at the end!
These center activities are a big hit! The kids dive right in, stay engaged, and always beg for “just one more.” It’s such a win-win meaningful practice wrapped up in fun!
Dental Health Math Centers
Here are a few fun math activities your students will love!
These math activities all use the same cube, but each one covers a different skill. I love when a single tool can do so much and the kids think it’s just a game, which makes it even better!
Books about teeth or the tooth fairy
This is one of my favorite books about tooth traditions from around the world!
Throw Your Tooth On the Roof by Selby Beeler
DENTAL HEALTH ACTIVITIES KINDERGARTEN LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE
You can download this free editable template by clicking on the photo below.
Want to see more weekly lesson plans like this one?
If you’re craving even more hands-on activities and classroom inspiration you can actually use, click below and keep those ideas flowing. Your future lesson planning self will thank you!
Dental Health Free Printables
This is a fun free Dental Health Bingo Game that I made editable. That way you can add your own sight words or skills you want your students to practice!
Dental Health Videos
If you are looking for some dental health videos, I have collected a few for you! Check it out!
Deedee Wills
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8 Responses
The links don’t work 🙁 they go to a paid February unit.
Hi Nancy,
I’m sorry, what links are giving you trouble? I checked the free file document (the Dental Health Bingo) and that seems to work fine. You have to enter your name and email in the box to get that file.
My mistake! From the picture I thought the little critter lessons were the free download 🙂 sorry!
Me too 🙁
Hi Eileen,
I’m not sure if you figured it out or not. The free file is at the very bottom of the blog post. So scroll to the bottom of the post and enter your information there. Thanks
I have your week of lessons for The Mitten (loved it- thanks!) and I thought I’d lucked into another big freebie. Now I see that it’s a part of your February guiding readers. I bought the Aug/Sept unit to use in my learning centre after I used the Mitten unit, I love how Teacher friendly they are. 🙂
Clicked on the the Little Critter craft icon to get the file and nothing happened…..
The craft is included in the purchase of the Engaging Readers set: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/READ-ALOUD-LESSONS-February-1655503?aref=nwyffwjd
The free file for this blog post is the Dental Health Bingo. If you enter your email in the box at the end of the post, the free file will be sent to your inbox.