The Honest Tooth

Last week was all about dental health. Hopefully you've noticed your child being more aware of the need to brush their teeth and willingness to do so. ( I have gotten a few good reports, at least)! We learned a poem that we soon to turned into a song (of course). We learn and recite poems each day for several reasons: 1) It builds up our fluency and expression when reading 2) We learn new sight words 3) We become more aware of rhyme 4) And it teaches us how to work as a team. Sometimes we take our show on the road and visit other classrooms to recite our poems for them. They are so proud of themselves when we do! 

 Here are some of our fun centers that were inspired by our dental health theme.

In their math workshops, the students played Dino Teeth to work on their addition skills to 6. The goal is that they can solve these simple addition problems without having to use their fingers to add them up- that these math facts will become committed to their memory. And we are definitely getting there. We play games like this ALOT. And how do we learn best (outside of making things FUN)? REPETITION!  

They created their own patterns. They used a pencil to spin the paper clip on the spinner. Then chose their colors and followed the pattern they spun.

They got to work brushing some dirty teeth to practice subtraction. Their mouthful of 16 teeth were first colored in with dry-erase marker. They used a spinner to find out how many teeth they needed to clean. First one to zero dirty teeth was the winner!  

 The fourth math workshop had nothing to do with teeth but they enjoyed it. The students used playdough to build shapes out of other shapes. 

The students visit one of the four workshops each day, so that by the end of the week, they have been to all four of them.  Here's a quick glimpse into what our math workshops look like in action.

In the fine motor center (during ELA center time - by the way - ELA stands for English and Language Arts) the students got to play dentist, flossing and using tools to get out all those sugar bugs!

 

 Speaking of ELA centers, they are getting really wordy in the magnet center here lately.

"It is going to storm. By Ava and Jacob". PS. Those letters all bunched together are said "storm!"

There are a few of the twelve independent centers that are not product-specific and allow the students to engage and explore however they choose - so long as they stay in their area, keep a low voice level and stay "on task." These centers are 1) blocks 2) dry-erase board 3) magnet board 4) and puzzles. The other eight task or product-specific centers are 1) The classroom library 2) writing  3) word work/letter work 4) sight words 5) computer 6) ipad 7)fine motor and 8) book-making center. Many of those centers have two or three different options for the students to choose from. While the majority of the students are in their independent centers, I conduct my reading group at the back table (which is why I insist on a low voice level). This is a glimpse of what that time looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XL14AoDCP0

As always, our journal prompts centered upon the theme. The books we read on this topic were spanned the genres: fiction, non-fiction, even historical fiction. Those books were The Berenstain Bears Go to the Dentist, I Know Why I Brush My Teeth, Dr. Desoto, and George Washington's Teeth. Sometimes the journals writings stem directly from the text, other times they are just about our general theme, like this one about what our toothbrushes look like.  (Ignore the top left of the board with the sight words here). Before the students get started, we brainstorm as a group and I will write my own response giving them examples of correct punctuation and capitalization. I always encourage them to tell me more, add more details. I also have them share their ideas aloud and write them down from time to time too. We always point out the important words in the prompt that they will want to use in their writing.

 As I am writing I will stop and have them tell me how to figure out how spell a word - SEGMENT! Then we segment the word together and they tell me what to write. (Segmenting is taking a word and verbally breaking it up into its individual sounds). For common sight words, they know to look at our word wall. I need a better picture - but those frames have chalkboard paint inside, on which the sight words are written - each frame containing words that begin with the same letter.

My toothbrush color is yellow and black.

My toothbrush is mostly pink and it has a princess on it.

No I have not lost any teeth yet. But I think I am going to lose a tooth soon. 

Their journal illustrations were particularly entertaining this week!

  

During our science time, we made a fun toothy snack with apple slices, peanut butter, and marshmallows

And we found out what happens to our teeth when we don't take care of them using this egg experiment.I placed hard-boiled eggs into red kool-aid, cola. coffee, and vinegar.

At the end of the day. we pulled them out of the beverages and left the vinegar one alone. 

As you would expect, they were stained. So I started to brush it with toothpaste, and like a magic - it was becoming white again. 

The kids were excited to to try it themselves. 

Back to that vinegar egg- when we pulled it out the next day, its shell was completely gone. I think this was probably what stuck the most with the kids. If they don't brush often or well enough and get a cavity, the cavity works like vinegar the vinegar did and will completely rot out your tooth. 

That same day, the fabulous Mrs. Theresa Shoup taught a dental health lesson that had doing some partner floss practice!

That's it for Dental Health Week! We will wrap up Seussapalooza on Monday. I leave you with pictures from a day that rocked their world. They saw SNOW and lots of it coming down all day outside our classroom window. We didn't know what to think. To us, of course, SNOW = NO SCHOOL. What a fun surprise!