Home School - All about Me - Teeth

We are slowly winding down our All about Me topic in Home School to concentrate on other fun activities that the boys seem to be taking more of an interest in. That being said the boys seemed fascinated when we did our tongue investigation and asked lots of questions about our teeth so I thought we would cover that.

We started  by looking at what teeth are made of. We discussed the difference between the main body of the tooth as well as the outer body being the enamel. This really interested William as he was born with several teeth without the enamel which made these teeth rot away quickly.

We then investigated the different parts as you can see below.

Crown

We found that the Crown is the body of the tooth that is usually seen above the gum.

Root

We discussed that in the same way trees have roots to firmly plant them to the ground that our roots do similar things but within our gums. James found this fascinating that there was more to the teeth than what we could see.

Nerve

As it is something that we couldn't see both of the boys had difficulty understanding that there would be a nerve within our teeth that help make it sensitive. With this we referred back to the taste test and discussed how hot and cold things made our teeth feel funny and that was the effect of the nerve.

After studying and discussing this we made the above poster from a diagram we found online.

We then watched a video with Dr Ranj where he discussed the difference between Baby and Adult teeth.

We then discussed that our first teeth appear between 6 to 12 months and that by the age of 3 we usually have a full set of 20 teeth. However, that after a few years the teeth are pushed out by the adult teeth which usually happens by the time you are 13. The boys loved this especially that they would have 28 teeth and not 20.

We even checked our own teeth to see if we could see the difference

We found that James had baby teeth and none of his adult teeth had come through. William, at the top, however has his front top 2 adult coming through and possibly more as he has a couple of wobbly teeth.

We then made a poster explaining that.

Finally we spent some time cleaning our teeth following how Dr Ranj told us.

The boys loved this and it really reinforced a lot of understanding that they already knew and was fun to find out more especially by watching the interactive video.