Every February the American Dental Association (ADA) sponsor’s National Children’s Dental Health Month to raise awareness and education on oral health. Since this month is dental health month, this week we have been exploring taking care of our teeth and dental hygiene for kids with this fun “How to Brush Your Teeth” Slime Activity!
This was a really fun activity to get a some tooth brushing practice and the slime added a bit of a challenge to the task!
Using Slime to Teach Kids How to Brush Their Teeth
Items Needed:
- Styrofoam Egg Cartons
- Yellow Slime
- White Slime
- Toothbrush
- Dental Floss
Note: Make your own slime and turn this into a STEM activity for kids! We really love this slime recipe! And if you are teaching younger kids you could even experiment with this edible slime recipe!
How to Play
Before heading off to play we talked about how the egg cartons represented our teeth. My daughter decided that they were either big kid teeth or belonged to a giant since they were much bigger than her teeth. We talked about “sugar bugs” aka plaque and the tooth brush.
As we talked about the items used for play I set up the activity.
Taking the time to have a discussion about dental health with your children will give the slime time to “melt” around the egg carton.
I also brought out some tooth paste and some plaque detecting mouth wash. Although we did not incorporate these items into our play, we did use them for discussions. Before sitting down to play we washed our mouth with the mouth wash to get a visual of the plaque in our mouth. The kids were also given a tooth brush to then brush the blue off.
While this is a nightly routine for us, most nights the kids still have a blue smile on their way to bed so I was planning on them still having a blue smile after brushing. After brushing we inspected our teeth for blue residue and did find it.
At this point we talked about how we really need to pay attention while brushing our teeth and how plaque likes to hide in hard to reach areas. We also talked about how the play toothbrush was not to be used in their mouth and only to be used on the egg carton.
By the time we were done talking and brushing our teeth the slime had completely covered the egg carton.
One of the great things about using slime is it’s consistency. As kids brush the egg carton not only will they get some of the “plaque” off, but they will also push some around and some will move back into the areas that they have already brushed.
Both kids had a complete blast with this activity. At one point my daughter even started adding in items from our art bin to her teeth (like pom-poms) to practice brushing them off.
After exploring the tooth brushes we pulled out our floss to try to get into those hard to clean crevices and the areas that the slime had refilled.
We had a blast with this activity and hope y’all do too!
If you aren’t setting up this “How to Brush Your Teeth” Slime Activity with your kids right this second then pin this post so you can easily find it later!
