Dental Hygiene Lesson Plan to Help Children Properly Brush their Teeth

An Egg and Some Cola Make a Great Visual for This Lesson

Dental hygiene is so important for children to learn. Proper teeth-brushing skills need to be instilled in children from a very young age. This teeth-brushing lesson plan provides a fun and effective visual for how properly brushing teeth using toothpaste and a toothbrush can keep teeth healthy and white.

Objective. The overall goal of this tooth brushing lesson plan is to teach children the importance of brushing their teeth and to show them how to properly brush their teeth. This lesson plan works for preschoolers through lower elementary aged children.

Supplies. The supplies needed for this dental hygiene lesson plan are a boiled egg (or several depending on how you plan to implement the lesson), cola, several small containers, toothbrushes, and toothpaste.

Procedure. The night before the teeth-brushing lesson is to be conducted, place your boiled eggs in the cola, covering them completely. Any full-sugar brown colored cola will work. You may choose to just submerge one egg and use it as a demonstration tool for your tooth brushing lesson plan, or you can submerge an egg for each child, or every two children, to have them actually do a hands-on learning activity as part of the dental lesson.

To begin your dental hygiene lesson plan, give the children a quick overview of how important it is to brush their teeth. Next show them a clean egg (one that has not been soaked in the cola). Tell the students that we are going to pretend that this egg is a tooth. Now place the "tooth" in some cola. Bring out the other eggs, or teeth, that have been soaking in the cola overnight. Remove the eggs and show the children how brown they are. You can compare the stained "tooth" to the white "tooth" to show just how stained the egg gets after soaking in cola, a drink that most kids very much enjoy.