Our Homeschooling Journey: Dental Care

My kid is growing really fast! I can still remember how I was as a clueless first time mom when she was born. Now, most of the time, I still am that clueless mom who pretends she's got it, but deep inside, I am worrying if I am making good choices for my daughter. Nonetheless, I am loving every minute of my motherhood.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a visit to the dentist because you know, the tooth fairy has been having quite a lot of visits at night. Yep, we're at that period where she is transitioning from a baby into a little kid. I keep reminding her though that no matter how big she's grown, she's still going to be my little baby girl.

The visit to the dentist went better than I anticipated. I expected a lot of tears and a lot of efforts convincing her to sit on the chair. It maybe that her curiosity is stronger than her fears. She did cry at first, but later on overcame her fears when she saw the tools that her beautiful dentist has on the table. Soon enough, the dentist switched from calming her down to teaching and explaining what each tool does.

The visit didn't last that long since there's not much to be done with my little kiddo's teeth. She proudly explained to the dentist that she doesn't eat candies because they're bad for the teeth and the health. When we got home, she had a whole lot more questions. It's a good thing me and the dentist had a good chat about teeth and dental care. Even though it's not part of our lessons for the day, I went ahead and made some changes in our schedule and added an activity for dental care.

I happened to find a post from another homeschooling mom on Facebook. I saw this before we went to the dentist and made a mental note to make one just like that soon. What better timing than now to perform this activity, right?

I used the same materials except for the beans. Playing with food isn't one of the things I am fond of. If I can find something else to play with, that's what I'm going for. I have tons of crafts materials in my crafting corner of the house and luckily enough, I found white beads! And it's perfect for showing what baby teeth looks like.

We made a model of the mouth using these materials:
red clay
used cardboard
white beads

Before I went ahead and started with the activity, I needed to look for proper sources for my teeth model. I know the little one will have lots more questions while we're making the teeth model so I read this arcticle on the web. We started with "How many teeth do kids have?" Then went straight ahead with How do I know which tooth will fall off next?" And so on and so forth.

Anyway, before we started with making the model of the teeth, we went ahead and had a review about the parts of the mouth, what they're for, and how to care for them. We talked about these things a little long while ago and I had hoped she remembers it even if we don't often talk about it. She even remembered about cleaning the tongue because she uses it to taste yummy food.

The actual activity:

I precut the cardboard out of the boxes we get from the grocery. I prefer boxes over plastic bags when I do the grocery because we are encouraging recycling and environmental awareness in our household. It's a challenge trying to minimize plastic usage but slowly but surely, we are eliminating the use of plastic as much as we can.

We made three lumps of red clay. Two of which will be molded into the gums and the other one into the tongue. I am not very fond of clays because they're sticky and I don't like the smell. But when you got a kid, you got to do everything you can not to hinder their imagination and artistry.

We lined the clay gums into the cardboard and then the tongue right smack in the middle of the lower part of the mouth. It looked like a toothless cutie little monster. This activity is so much fun and there's really lots of giggles while making it.

And for the finale, I had her insert the teeth into the gums. While doing so, we discussed what kind of teeth they are and what they're for. She kept on looking at the mirror just to make sure that she has the teeth that we are talking about. We also talked about how grownups have more teeth than kids do. She concluded that the reason why humans eat both veggies and meat is because we have a lot of different kinds of teeth in our mouths. (Unlike her meat eating and plant eating toy dinos.) Yes, we're at the point of our lives where I wake up with a toy dino in the middle of the bed, and we spend extra time watching Jurassic Park.

Another part of the lesson is caring for the teeth, gums, and tongue. She now often uses the word cavity when explaining to her cousins that they shouldn't eat too much sweets.

At the end of the activity, she removed the two upper teeth on the clay mouth model we had. She said that it should look like her mouth, and so we did. It is indeed really effective to teach with joy and happiness and lots of giggles. Not only do we get the young ones' attention, it is easier for them to retain knowledge because their brains are stimulated.

In this activity, we were able to tick a lot of boxes in our learning. We learned

• the different parts of the mouth
• how many teeth a kid and a grownup has
• different kinds of teeth a human has and what they're for
• proper dental care

While we're learning, we were also able to achieve more simply memorizing the parts of the mouth

• the kid was able to imagine more closely how the teeth works
• the clay molding and mouth modeling encouraged art and imagination
• she sees that learning is fun
• she is also encouraged to think, analyze, and draw her own conclusions

I recognize that teaching kids at home can be so time consuming and energy draining. Trying to make learning fun can be so much more difficult than it already is. But this is the best way to make the kids' brains stimulated and thus keeping them interested. I just tell myself that the more my kid sees that learning and education is fun, the easier it is for her and me to push forward with our homeschooling journey.