Maintaining dental health is all about habits. And habits are best formed through activities. Your kids may not care about their teeth and gums because they are being so. It’s however up to you, the parent, to instill in them good oral habits and get across the message. Since you can’t drill down good habits by force, it’s always better to take the route of fun to bring your little ones on the same page for oral hygiene. You can come up with some innovative games and activities to help your child pick up the nuances of dental health along with becoming familiar with the virtues of oral hygiene.
Here are some of games and activities to teach dental health lessons to your kids –
- Role Play
Role plays are a great way to educate your child on dental health. In this, you and your little ones can take turn to assume the role of a doctor and patient and have fun as well. You can start by being the doctor and ask your child some funny questions in regard to germs and bacteria in the mouth. You can use some utensils from the kitchen and poke them into the mouth to act as of you are checking something. This game will also help easy the fear of dentists among kids, so give it a try and get double benefits.
- Story Telling
Oral lessons laced with stories can help you kids get the clear picture about dental health easily than other ways. This will stay in the mind for years and naturally, help them learn good things about dental health. For example, you can make them imagine how the superman or batman can help kill germs and bacteria in mouth. You can let them use a fancy toothbrush with a cartoon-character design of their favorite ‘superhero’ and get the message across easily. If your story is engaging, this will help the kid a lot in learning the basics of oral hygiene.
- Eat This, Not That! Game
What we eat has a bearing on our dental health. Keeping this in mind, you should engage in a game where little ones get the idea about foods that are good or bad for their dental health. You can use the internet to collect pictures of food, array them accordingly and show your child to spot. You can choose both good and bad foods and play any game where the kid is asked to identify the one helpful for their dental health.
- Hygiene Charade
In this game, you just have to act out for your kids some oral hygiene action and make them take the guess. Your actions could be like ‘teeth brushing’ or ‘tooth flossing’ or ‘tongue cleaning’ ‘mouth rinsing’ or ‘tooth extraction’ or ‘toothache’ or something you deem fit for oral health purpose. With hygiene charade game, you can help your child get a better understanding of dental care and may start taking oral health seriously for sure.
- Good Habit, Bad Habit Puzzle
We know what good oral care etiquettes are. And we also know the bad ones. But chances are, our kids may not know them at all. So, you can engage them in a puzzle game where you make a list of good and bad habits and let them find out the truth. This game is easy to play as you can use some pictures and then show them to your kid to guess whether the certain act or activity is good for them. Apart from this, you can also drill in kids good and positive things about dentist in queens and prepare them for dental visits.