Our first dental project III. - 4 more activities

As a part of our dental project we did some more tooth crafts, experiments and had a fascinating insight into the structure of a tooth combined with some letter recognition. Here they come:

Stick the teeth

I enlarged and printed this mouth without teeth from the net, the cut out small pieces of rectangles for teeth. I also provided E. with some pink, red and claret coloured pencils and crayons to colour the inside of the mouth. Of course, there was glue for her to start the sticking of the teeth

Colouring:

Gluing:

Sticking:

A little bit of fooling around: - Look, Mommy, I'm a rabbit.

Eating oreo and apple

To show E. what happens to her teeth when she eats sweets I "made" her eat an Oreo biscuit. First, she thought I was kidding when I offered her a chocolate biscuit before dinner. She asked with hesitation: - Can I eat it?

After she'd eaten it I took a photo of her teeth and she could have a look in the mirror how they looked.

I guess she won't forget the meaning of disgusting.

yuckie

Then I served her with a few slices of apple and told her to "clean" her teeth. She didn't understand what I meant. Still, she enjoyed the experiment so much she ate up the apple slices without any questions. 

munch, munch

She was more than happy after looking into the mirror again.

They are white again.

We talked about healthy and unhealthy food (I have another activity in mind connected to this topic), how food is stuck on our teeth and the importance of eating food good for our teeth and, of course, why it is necessary to brush our teeth.

 

The inside of a tooth

I brought this huge tooth with flaps to open from Ireland. I thought I could use it teaching kids. Although I've been teaching quite a lot of children, none of them was at such a level that I could use this fantastic material with them. But the time came when I could have a great use of it.

On the back

The other side with the flaps

Opening the flaps you can examine the inside of the tooth

You can make your own lift-the-flap tooth

We were talking about it both in English and at another time in Hungarian. E. also examined her own tooth crowns and how they sit in her gum. A funny conversation:

M.: - You see how pink your gum is?
E.:- Yes, but why not... purple?
M.: - Because it would mean your gum is ill.
E.: - But mine is beautiful and healthy.
M.: - Sure it is. You take good care of your gum and teeth.

At another time when she wanted to look at the "big tooth" again, I flipped the side flaps back so she couldn't see them names and I "tested" her a little. I asked her to show me the gum, the dentine, the enamel and the pulp with the blood vessels. She remembered them all. In the book (I've already written about in an earlier post), Izgő-mozgó fogaim, she saw funny-looking bacteria chewing themselves through the enamel to the dentine. She remembered this picture and said:

- Mommy, in the book the bad bacteria goed (sic!) into the dentine to eat it.

I think now she's aware of the fact how important it is to clean our teeth. To be honest, she rarely refused to brush her teeth. Sometimes, when she is tired in the evening or in a bad mood, she asks me to do do it.

- Mommy, you do it, but gently, please.

Letter recognition

As she was really interested and amazed by the task above I thought a bit of letter recognition wouldn't hurt. I made 4 cards and added some Scrabble letter cubes to them.

Busy buddy at work - concentration on maximum

I also drew a tooth on which she could identify the different parts after finishing a word.

pulp

She needed to recognise the letters and put them in order. I expected her to ask for help or first I thought we should do this activity together but she did it all on her own... 3-4 times, actually. Then I decided to do the same in Hungarian as well.

Much to my surprise, she noticed that dentine (in English) and dentin (in Hungarian) are the same except for the last letter E. She told me this comparison once at dinnertime. Then we had to list a few words that are similar or the same in English and Hungarian. Mind you, we never compare the two languages, it happened in her head totally by herself.

Our dental project hasn't finished yet, though we'll take a break (to spend more time with E.'s new craze/hobby/interest i.e. chess).

But I'll come back with a compelling science experiment, which still belongs to our dental unit.