Bulletin Board Ideas for Dental Hygiene at School

Young children love learning about their bodies and absorb new ideas like sponges. Greet your students as they walk into the classroom with a large illustration of a tooth on the door to announce dental hygiene week. Let the students know that they will be able to participate in helping to create ideas for their class bulletin board as they learn more about their teeth and good hygiene.

Giant Toothbrush

• Create a giant toothbrush archway in front of the bulletin board. Stretch a clothesline or other piece of rope from one side of the room to the other in front of the bulletin board and secure the ends on the walls. Cut out sections, that make the shape of a giant toothbrush, from a roll of brown wrapping paper. Team your students together and let each team paint a section. Tape sections together when the paint is dry. Make bristles from strips of plastic garbage bags. Staple the toothbrush handle to the clothesline and the plastic strips to the handle to make bristles that hang down. The kids will love walking through the bristles to get to the bulletin board.

Tooth Anatomy

• Make a bulletin board display showing the individual parts of the tooth. Have the students help label the parts. Make the display in two parts, one being a healthy tooth, and the other being a tooth with cavities. Give each student a chance to make the different parts necessary for the display.

Big Tooth Smiles

• Make a pattern of a giant tooth and trace it on white construction paper, one for each student in the class. Let the students each cut out a tooth. Using a camera, take pictures of each child's face, focusing on their smile. An old-fashioned Polaroid camera works best because you can have photos in an instant. If you don't have a Polaroid camera, take the photos with a digital camera and print them on plain paper. Have each child attach his smile to the tooth he cut out. Staple everyone's toothy grin to the bulletin board. If you have each child put his name on the back of one of the tooth's roots, you can play "Guess Whose Smile," and check to see if they are right by turning up the end of the root to check names.

Toothy Foods

• Decorate the bulletin board with photos of each student's smile. Place them around the edge of the bulletin board as a border. In the center of the board, have each student draw a food that is good for their teeth on a piece of construction paper. You can also have them draw foods that damage teeth and place the different foods on the bulletin board in a two-part display.

Alligator Teeth

• Cut old egg cartons and give each child her own row of 6 "alligator teeth." Let the children paint the egg carton teeth white with an old toothbrush. Design an alligator on the bulletin board and color it with green scales cut from construction paper. Attach each child's set of alligator teeth along the jawline in his mouth.

Daily Hygiene Charts

• Make a chart with squares for one month's time. Decorate the chart with a well-known character from television or movies. Copy the charts so you have enough to hand out to each student. Let the students put the charts on the bulletin board, and each day they can put a sticker on that date to signify they brushed their teeth that morning.