Looking for dental health activities for your classroom? You have come to the right place! National Children’s Dental Health Month comes in month of February. So if you are looking for a fun way to teach students about dental care and healthy teeth, I’ve got you covered.
In this blog post, I will share a few fun books to add to your dental health theme week, plus a few tooth fairy books, just because I love them!
From hands-on activities to fun songs, we’ve got you covered with a range of activities that will teach students how to take care of their teeth and have a blast. So, let’s get started with some fun activities for your dental health unit.
We love Little Critter and so do preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students! Therefore, this week’s close reading lesson plans center are around Mercer Mayer’s book Just Going to the Dentist! (affiliate links) The story is centered around Little Critter’s trip to the dentist office.
As you know, we use the same book for 5 days to explore various reading comprehension strategies and vocabulary lessons.
As we read, we select a spot in the text to pause. We ask the students to make a prediction on what will happen next in the book. Kindergarten and preschool students can draw pictures to illustrate their thinking. First grade students will add more text.
In virtually all of our book lessons, students retell the story events in order. We love having the picture cards as they help organize student’s thinking. The cards are also in a PowerPoint slide that works perfectly on an interactive whiteboard.
Once the picture cards are in sequential order, students turn to their partners and practice retelling the story in order. They practice using transition words like: first, next, then, after that, and finally. This oral language is so powerful. Partners switch back and forth (with my signal) so everyone participates! Priceless!
Then students work on their own retelling activity. I attached this one to the Little Critter craft. Making a craft is a great way to engage students and help them strengthen their fine motor skills.
I’m going to be totally honest with you. I have had panic attacks and they have ONLY happen in the dentist office. (Tears, hyperventilation, tremors, drama-mama!) Therefore, I may not be the best person to model this comprehension strategy with little kids.
However, students had no problem answering the wrtiing prompt. Here are a few examples of the student responses as they made a connection with the story.
We used the illustrations to help us infer how Little Critter was feeling when it was his turn to see the dentist.
Each week take a few words from the story and we work on our vocabulary. Here is a peek at the anchor chart we create.
As you can see, we keep track of the words we have studies. I like to stack the charts on top of each other so we can go back and look at the previous words we have learned.
Learn more about how these vocabulary lessons look by reading:
You can find all of the activities for this dental health lesson plans by clicking:
Yes, those baby teeth are all falling out in kindergarten. So my class loved this tooth poem for the week! Although it is not a dental health song, it is a perfect way to celebrate our own teeth!
We concentrate on one poem all week. Students put the poem in their poetry notebook.
On Friday, we usually do a fluency activity around the poem. This particular week, I had my students do a Chatterpix video. So fun! BONUS: You can save these videos and send them to parents.
You can learn more about our 5 day fluency plan by clicking:
Discussing the importance of proper brushing is also part of our week long dental health science unit. This is a fun experiment from our Science, Math and More packet. With this activity, young children will learn that tooth enamel on is similar to an egg shell.
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 thier observations on a recording sheet. This is a hands-on way to show the importance of good dental hygiene habits.
Dental Health Month is a great time to bring out these dental health vocabulary cards for your writing center!
These vocabulary cards are used for various writing center response pages and they are all about taking care of your teeth!
Here are a few more dental health literacy center ideas. If you click on the images you will find the activity.
Students put the sentence in order. Next they write it and illustrate it.
These center activities are a big hit!
Here are a few fun math activities your students will love.
These math activities use the same cube, but they each cover a different skill!
Here are a few fun math activities your students will love.
These math activities use the same cube, but they each cover a different skill!
This is one of my favorite books about tooth traditions from around the world!
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!
If you are looking for some dental health videos, I have collected a few for you! Check it out!
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
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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.