Welcome to the classroom! We love to play, learn, create and sing together in the classroom, and we’d like to encourage our classroom friends to keep learning and playing at home once Caitie’s Classroom is over. We’ve put together activities and resources so the playing, learning, creating and singing doesn’t have to stop once Caitie says goodbye. Try these out at home or in your own classroom, and have fun!
In this episode of Caitie’s Classroom, we are learning how to keep our smiles healthy! We try an experiment with eggs that shows what might happen if we don’t brush our teeth, we practice our counting and tooth brushing skills, Caitie visits the dentist and much more! Read on for tips and ideas on how to recreate the classroom activities at home and expand on them for more learning and fun.
Brush Your Teeth – Pretend Play
Before little ones can brush their teeth on their own, they can practice brushing with pretend play! Caitie uses her finger to pretend to brush. Try calling out different ways to brush and your little ones try out the movements. Side to side! Up and down! Round and round! Go back and forth between the movements to make it a fun game. Making something like brushing our teeth a part of pretend play helps get little ones excited about brushing their teeth on their own, and helps with their coordination for when they start doing it for real.
Brush Your Teeth – Song
Follow along with the song as you brush your teeth, either for real (the song is just over two minutes – the perfect length for brushing your teeth) or in pretend play.
Here are some other versions of this fun Super Simple Song:
For more ideas on how to teach and learn with the Super Simple Song Brush Your Teeth, watch our How To Teach – Brush Your Teeth video.
Count Your Teeth
A fully grown adult mouth has 32 teeth. That’s a lot of teeth! Counting teeth is a great way to practice counting. Count along with Caitie during the episode, and keep practicing with these teeth counting ideas at home:
- Ask your little one how many teeth they have? They can make a guess and count in the mirror.
- Ask your little one to guess how many teeth you or an adult might have. Try counting them by looking in a mirror or directly into the mouth.
- Look at pictures of mouths and count the teeth.
- Draw a picture of a mouth and fill it with teeth. Count the number of teeth that fit into the mouth.
- Draw a picture of a mouth and draw a certain amount of teeth. Ask your little one to draw 12 teeth, for example, and have them count as they draw. They can draw their mouth with the amount of teeth they have, or draw the grown up mouth of teeth that they counted.
Egg Experiment
Our egg experiment shows what might happen to our teeth if we do not brush them regularly. They can get dirty and stained from the foods we eat. You can easily recreate this experiment at home:
- Hardboil as many eggs as you would like to use in your experiment.
- Fill cups with the liquids you would like to use for your experiment. We used water (as a control), vinegar, cola and water with red food coloring. Try other liquids, ask your little one if they have any suggestions and see what they say.
- Leave the eggs in the liquid for at least six hours. Ask your little ones to guess what might have happened to the eggs. Take a look and see! Depending on the liquid the eggs were in, they will look and feel different. This happened after only six hours. The same thing can happen to our teeth if we don’t brush them regularly. See what happens to the eggs after more time.
- Try brushing an egg in food coloring with toothpaste and a toothbrush to see the difference brushing your teeth can make. An egg that has been sitting in food coloring for six hours should become whitened after brushing for 2 minutes with toothpaste. It will become difficult to brush the coloring off if the eggs stays in the liquid longer than six hours.
Field Trip To The Dentist
Going to the dentist can be a nerve wracking experience for little ones. Knowing what to expect can help them feel more comfortable about their visit, and knowing that it is an important part of staying healthy. If you have an upcoming visit to the dentist with your little one, watching the field trip portion of this episode before going can be a good idea. Answer their questions and point out things in the field trip that they might see at their dentist’s office. When you get the dentist’s office, try to point out similarities from Caitie’s field trip.
Brush Away The Germs Craft
A toothbrush is for brushing our teeth, but it can also make an interesting paint brush! Pick a toothbrush that will become a part of your craft drawer and make sure little ones know that it is not meant for our mouth once it has been dipped in paint.
You can brush away the germs at home just like Caitie with our Banish The Germs worksheet.
You can use a toothbrush too, or a paint brush or white crayon works well too!
We hope you have fun singing, playing, learning, and creating! We love to see photos of our friends having fun in the classroom and of their wonderful creations! You can share them with us a few different ways:
