Oral hygiene plan
OH Lesson Plan
Audience : Grade 3-5 students
Time : 40 min
Goal : To make students understand the importance of brushing and flossing, as well as basic education about teeth function and healthy food choices.
Objective :
Upon completing this session students will better understand:
1-The function of teeth and how many sets of teeth people have.
2-Why is it important to have healthy teeth.
3-What plaque and cavity are.
4-How to brush and floss properly
5-Why eating nutritious food is important.
Content
The importance of teeth as a part of our life
The difference between baby and permanent teeth
The dental plaque process
How to take care of our teeth
Nutrition as an important factor in maintaining good O-Hygiene
Visual aids
Tooth brushing and flossing (animated).
What is dental plaque (animated).
Dental floss and brushes.
Supporting materials
Sir flossmore’s hygiene quiz.
Sir flossmore’s hygiene certificate.
How to brush (charts )
Old and new toothbrushes.
Introduction
Hello, my name is Angela . I am a dental hygienist student.
Today we are going to talk about a very important art of our bodies- our teeth.
-First I would like to know if any of you knows why do we need teeth? (discuss children’s suggestions which may include talking eating smiling etc)
Eating
-Ok, so we need teeth to eat, very well. We need our teeth to chew our food in little pieces. This keeps us choking or getting a stomach ache.
Eating is easier and more fun. Can you imagine settling down to watch your favorite T. V. show with a big bowl of popcorn and not having teeth to chew with? Or having a big, juicy, red apple but no teeth?
Talking
-How about talking?
Is it easy to talk without using our teeth?? Lets try it. Say : “thirty three” without letting your tongue touching your teeth. That was very hard wasn’t it? So our teeth help us chew the food, and also help us talking to each other properly. What else ?
-Smiling!?
We have a nicer smile if we have our teeth .You make other people happy and feel happy yourself when you can give them a big bright smile. (Ask children to smile at each other.)
Think about not having your teeth. ( take one kid and paint some of his teeth with a black eatable pencil.) (Children will laugh).
So now we know that our teeth are very important because, they help us talk properly chew our food and give us beautiful smiles.
Explain teeth
-Lets talk about our teeth. Who knows how to describe our teeth? Are they hard or soft? Are they rounded or sharp? Are they strong or they brake easy?? (Discuss the answers)
So our teeth are white, hard, sharp and strong to help us chew the food smile, and talk.
Teeth # Permanent vs baby teeth
Now i have a hard question. How many teeth babies have? Let’s see the picture and count together.
So when we are babies we have 20 teeth. Will you have these teeth forever? [NO]
What happens to your teeth when you get to be 5-6 years old? Yes your other teeth start to come out. These teeth are bigger in size (show the difference of primary and permanent dentition with pictures) and they are called permanent teeth because they stay for life in our mouth.
By the age of 18 everyone of you will have 32 permanent teeth. It is very important to understand that this teeth are the only teeth we have and if we brake one of these permanent teeth, we cant have a beautiful smile anymore, we cant talk and we cant eat properly.
How to take Care of teeth (Demo)
-That’s why we need to take care of our teeth. (Ask the class) How do we take care of our teeth?
[Brushing and flossing]. Before I show you what are the proper ways to floss and brush I will play a video for you so you can understand what happens in your mouth after we eat a meal.
-Plaque is bad for your teeth because it contains germs that are very harmful for our teeth.
The plaque can hurt our teeth making little holes that are called cavity.
What do you thing happens if we take a strong tooth and put a hole in it. It wont be stronger anymore right? Plaque and cavities make our teeth weaker.
Now we know how important is to keep our teeth cleaned, we should brush and floss twice a day.
Another way to avoid plaque and bacteria to damage our teeth is eating healthy foods.
Tooth brushing and flossing
Now im gone show you another video (Play a video from Youtube)
-So brushing and flossing helps us fight the bacteria that is caused by the food that we eat.
How many of you brush your teeth? Great. How many times a day should we brush our teeth? [twice].
How long should we brush our teeth for? [3 min]
-What do you put on your brush before you start brushing? [toothpaste]. Why do we need to use toothpaste? [cleans better then just water, gets the food off your teeth, makes your teeth stronger, makes your mouth smell good].
-Does any of you know how much toothpaste we should use? [listen to a few suggestions] you might be surprised but you only need a little bit of toothpaste- about the size of a little green pea. [Demonstrate how putting toothpaste on the brush and show it to everyone].
-When you are brushing your teeth with toothpaste we shouldn’t swallow because we are just cleaning our teeth not our stomach.
Nutrition
Like vegetables and fruits for breakfast lunch and dinner. For example if you are hungry and you feel like eating a snack, choose fruits or yogurt and cheese, if you are thirsty choose water or milk. Because all these foods help protecting you teeth. Don’t eat to much sugary foods like candies o sodas. If you want to eat some sweets try to eat them with your meals.
In the end give them a quiz and a certificate from Sir Flossingmore
Or play more videos about brushing and flossing .
