This simple activity is designed for kids from 2 years old. What would it be like to learn to brush our teeth playing with a marker and a sheet of paper? The intriguing answer, right? Your kid should be brushing twice a day. Well, that is the activity that I show you below. It is a very simple home game to prepare that helps us create or reinforce the habit of brushing teeth for kids.
With this simple activity, we can introduce this new routine to kids from 2 years old, so that the time to brush your teeth is fun and a good time to spend in the company of adults.
Step by step to create this home game
Materials needed: Folios, Waxes or colored pencils, Plasticizing covers, Plasticizer, Whiteboard marker pen and Toothbrush.
From early childhood it is very important to educate boys and girls about their hygiene. Washing your hands, face, combing your hair or brushing your teeth are some of the tasks you can do on your own with a little independence and autonomy.
On this occasion, we focus on the exercise of brushing our teeth, a task that they must perform several times a day, at least after breakfast and before bedtime (at noon, many kids eat in school canteens, which makes it difficult exercise).
Following these simple 5 steps, we can carry out our activity to reinforce kid’s dental hygiene.
1. On a sheet, we draw a large mouth with teeth. You can save and print the one that we offer you here to serve as a template.
2. With waxes or colored pencils, we color the mouth, leaving the teeth white. Encourage kids to color it with you to involve them in the creation process.
3. We introduce the folio into a plastic cover and plasticize it.
4. With the whiteboard markers, we paint over the teeth as if they were dirty.
5. With the help of a toothbrush, we remove the marker from each tooth, just as if we were brushing.
Create the habit of brushing your teeth and other benefits
There are many benefits we get with this activity for kids. We can group them as follows:
– At a motor level
According to a pediatric dentist in Fredericksburg, VA, this kind of activity will let boys and girls develop and enhance total control of their hand, which is what directs the action, carrying out perfect manual eye coordination, which also implies a great state of concentration and attention so that the activity is carried out properly.
In addition, this homemade game also encourages a good grip of the brush and strength when moving this, which will favor when taking a pencil and do it hard to make the stroke.
– At the level of new concepts
When learning is an activity with many new concepts for kids that we can see thanks to it.
On the one hand, we will explain the importance of oral hygiene in our day to day and more in the ages that they have, it is their first teeth that they have to take care of and they must be aware of the responsibility that this requires.
Thus, through the activity, we will show how to brush your teeth, passing the brush through each one with the ‘up-down-up-down’ movement and not from side to side or from left to right. In this way, they will also learn and internalize the concepts ‘above’ and ‘below’.
Other concepts to work are ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’, in this way they will have to identify which teeth are dirty and clean them. This way, they will be able to differentiate them from the clean ones.
In short, it is a super fun activity, which can be repeated once and a thousand times because it can be deleted and start again. It is a game that never ends and that will always be different, which attracts kids, in addition to the added component that is ‘doing something older’ such as brushing twice a day your teeth, even on paper. However, the mere fact of picking up an object such as a toothbrush is already very motivating for them.
