Good dental care begins in the home. It helps to find ways to engage your children in fun activities about dental health. Here are some ideas for younger children:
Taste Test:
Gather edible items which are sweet, sour, bitter, salty or savory. Tell your child to stick out their tongue in front of a mirror and point out the bumps on the tongue. Tell them that these bumps are called taste buds and that they help them know what food tastes like. Have them try each food and ask whether the food is sweet, sour, salty, bitter or savory. Review the right answers with them at the end.
Proper Brushing:
This is a fun artsy way to teach your child about the reason behind brushing your teeth and proper brushing techniques. Sketch an outline of a tooth on a dark piece of construction paper. Then give your child an old toothbrush with a bit of white paint and ask them to cover the entire tooth with their “toothpaste”. You can help demonstrate different techniques like brushing up, down, sideways and circular motions to make sure that the entire tooth is white.
Supermarket Collage:
When you feed your child healthy food, you might get some resistance. But do they really know what’s good and bad for their teeth? Write on one side of a piece of paper “Good Foods” and on another “Foods that can hurt my teeth”, and draw a line in the middle. Then gather some supermarket fliers from the mail. Help your child to cut out various foods and glue them on one side or another.
If this is the time for a dental checkup in the Mechanicsville, Virginia area, you can call Paul R. Stanovick, DDS at 804-781-1919 for an appointment with Dr. Paul or Brant Stanovick.