Learning & Development: Dental care - Open wide
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
A visitor from outside and a well-stocked role play area taught children about dental care
The children from St Osmund's Pre-school have been involved in a dental care project.
'We decided on the project after some of the children engaged in eager discussion about recent dental check-ups,' says pre-school leader Sharon Meads.
PLANNED LEARNING INTENTIONS
- To manage their own personal hygiene
- To recognise the importance of keeping healthy, and things that contribute to this
- To use their imagination in art and design, music, dance, imaginative and role-play, and stories
RESOURCES
Resources brought by a dental visitor, such as large teeth, X-rays, stickers; coloured plastic mugs and matching new toothbrushes; empty toothpaste boxes; dental mirrors; white bibs and tabards; bowls; safety goggles; photos of dental tools; posters and books about caring for teeth and healthy eating; office equipment, such as a telephone, computer, clipboard, appointment book and writing tools; child-size armchair, stool and small chairs; magazines for waiting area; dolls.
STEP BY STEP
- First we wrote to a local dental practice asking for someone to come and talk to the children.
- With the children's help, we then transformed our role-play area into a dental surgery and waiting area.
- We scribed a list of resources that the children thought we would need, and drew up a plan together of how our surgery might look.
- We hung up posters and created a patient's chair from a child-size armchair and stool. An adjacent table housed bowls and plastic instruments.
- The dental nurse visited our dental surgery in role to examine the teeth of children and dolls. She also hung up some X-ray photographs.
- The children thoroughly enjoyed the dental nurse's visit, especially handling the large teeth and finding out how to brush them correctly with a giant toothbrush.
- We all sang 'We brush our teeth from side to side' and 'Open your mouth nice and wide' to the tune of 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush', and made up verses of our own.
- We explained why the children should not put the toothbrushes and mirrors in their mouths, but just 'pretend'.
- We now regularly visit the area in role and find that lots of child-initiated learning is apparent, for example, matching toothbrushes to mugs by colour and extending imaginative language.
Sharon Meads is the pre-school leader at St Osmund's Pre-school, Gainford, County Durham. She spoke to Jean Evans.
