Today we marked World Oral Health Day.
Together we discovered how regular brushing and the use of dental floss keep our teeth healthy, and then learned about the structure of the mouth and the teeth: how many kinds of teeth we have, what each is for and why they look so different from one another.
This part matters more than it seems. A child who is merely told to brush their teeth does it out of obligation, and does it quickly. A child who knows that a tooth has a coating that does not grow back, and that what the brush fails to reach stays between the teeth, changes the way they brush, because they understand what they are aiming at.
We also talked about losing milk teeth, the subject that always produces the greatest number of personal stories, and about the link between what we eat and how quickly problems appear.
At PlusKids our activities are devoted to learning every day, and days given over to a health topic have the advantage that the lesson goes home with the child.