Healthy Teeth- First and Second Grade

Classroom introduction

In 1st and 2nd grade, students learned the importance of taking care of their teeth.  Lessons bridge across subject areas such as art, math, science and language arts.

One of the activities students loved was “matching teeth.” Here, they learn important scientific vocabulary such as cuspids and incisors.  Students analyze shapes, places/positions and numbers of teeth. In this puzzle-like activity, the children identify each tooth and place it where it belongs in the mouth.  Students feel like little dentists counting, identifying, and matching teeth. 

In language arts, the children are exposed to many fun titles. Such as “Going to the Dentist”, “I Know Where My Food Goes”, “You Think It’s Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?”, “I know Why I Brush my Teeth”.  Furthermore, in small group guided reading they read books at their reading level based on the same toothy theme. 

The experiment

Their science experiment is highly engaging.  Students are given hard boiled eggs and their teacher explains how eggs’ shells are similar to our teeth. Both eggshells and teeth are porous and made of minerals.  They make a hypothesis of what will happen to the eggshells when there are submersed in juice, water or coca cola.   This compares to the tooth enamel when we over-expose our teeth to these three liquids.

They place the eggs in these three liquids and observe the results 24 hours later. 

Confirming most of their hypothesis, the result is that juice and coca cola dyed the eggs darker shades. Students learn that these liquids have acid. The acid can erode our teeth if we over-expose our teeth to these liquids without frequent brushing.

The impact of this experiment has made the children more aware than ever of the importance of taking care of our teeth.

Creating connections for the students across subject areas and allowing them to hypothesize and discover answers is the best way for students to actively engage in their own learning process.