Homeschool Bodies: Teeth

I'm so thankful for teeth! During our week of tooth study, we practiced flossing with ribbon on egg cartons that had nasty green tissue paper bits of food between "teeth." They loved it.

They learned to identify different parts of the teeth, including the: enamel, dentin, pulse, root, crown and nerves. They also identified their incisors, canines and molars/pre-molars. Plus, we learned how to look at a skull of an animal and be able to tell if the animal was a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore solely by looking at the teeth. Pretty cool.

Then we tried an experiment to see about staining the enamel on teeth. We used eggs to represent teeth, and tested them in grape juice, hot chocolate and lemonade.

Here are the results, after sitting in those bowls for two days. Yuck.

Here are two silly girls writing down their hypothesis and observations.

We had to try and clean those stained teeth right away, so each set to work.

Scrub, scrub.

 

The after-brushing eggs looked much better, but still not as white as the original. Lesson learned: keep teeth white by not letting food/drinks sit on them. Brush right away!

Of course, we needed to update our wall bodies.

Here's one written hypothesis, observations and results.
Hands-on experiments make such an impact - I don't even have to tell them to brush their teeth after drinking a glass of juice any more! :)