Week of June 7 - Dental Health

 Monday

The dentist gives me horrible anxiety, even as a 28 year old. I had pretty bad experiences as a kid, not helped by my obsession with soda, and had very few positive experiences. It's something I don't want my kids to be anxious about though, so this week we're getting excited about dental health! For name practice we used some letters printed onto teeth and placed it onto a toothbrush, with some extra letters for more practice throughout the week. I caught myself trying to control the activity a little too much and had to take a step back while prepping the activity. Charlotte is perfectly capable of cutting stuff out. It won't look as good, but she has to practice, and she loves cutting things! So I left the remainder of the teeth for her to cut out. She also had a blast cutting the white paper to be the bristles for the toothbrush (I did too when I did it for Clesse).

I got these super cute dentist sets from Amazon and the kids LOVE them. I love them too. The toothpaste has a little button to push to "squeeze" it out, there's little caps to put on the teeth with cavities, and the bottles actually have caps that come off (kind of a good thing, kind of bad if your kid is the type to hide things in there haha). Sissy was done before her little bro, so I busted out the pre-school workbook.

After the boys napped, I busted out the ball pit and the kids threw balls at me and I honestly had a blast with how crazy they were. They needed a chance to scream and have fun after being cooped up and sick this weekend. Then we played a game that I think is one of my best ideas yet as a parent - tooth fairy. I lay down on a pillow and close my eyes while the kids try to sneak a pretend tooth out from under my pillow and put coins there instead. I usually snore loud or stir a bit when they get close to prolong each round a bit. Highly recommend if you want to stay still for a minute!

Tuesday

There are a lot of runny noses at our house! So we're taking it easy today. The kids found some lanterns I had in the closet and had a blast turning off the lights and running around with them. It honestly was hilarious to see how confused Charlotte was when we turned the lights off and could still easily see because it was 10 in the morning.

Then we busted out the tunnel and Charlotte built a little obstacle course with a cushion slide. I love this for Koko because he can romp around with his siblings in a safe way!

Clesse eventually wanted to do a worksheet, so we practiced the letter D. He did SO awesome. I am so proud of how much control he has with a dabber. In the afternoon we took Charlotte to her first piano lesson, and then I took all 3 kids to the grocery store. It was EXHAUSTING. But a highlight was definitely that while I was trying to pick out some produce, I looked back to check on the kids and saw Koko with two nectarines that he was chowing down on. It was so cute! I've never had a kid who just does stuff like that! He is definitely keeping me on my toes.
 

Wednesday

We continued our dental health theme by doing something I saw on several different pins on Pinterest. I printed out a picture of a tooth on some colored paper and let the kids paint it white with a toothbrush. They loved it, and the paint I got was pretty watery and actually looked like toothpaste on the paper.

Charlotte wanted to do another activity, so I placed this printable into a plastic sleeve and let her put "food" in the teeth by scribbling with different colors. Green for broccoli, orange for Goldfish, etc. There were a lot of activities I saw where you sorted foods that were "good" and "bad" for your teeth, but I'm not a huge fan of those because none of them are really "good" for your teeth. Anything left in there can cause dental caries. Then we used a toothbrush to scrub them clean, but oh wait! The toothbrush doesn't quite get everything. We also have to "floss" with this paper towel to get the stubborn little parts, and voila! Now we have clean teeth.

The boys were pretty grumpy after their nap, so I stuck them in the tub and we practiced letters with some foam alphabet tiles while Char watched a little tv. I feel like tubbies solve everything!

Thursday

Clesse asked me if we could watch Frozen this morning, so we did. I'm not capable of saying no to that movie. And it was pretty nice to cuddle a bit with how the kids have been a bit sick. Once Koko woke up from his nap we went outside because it was fairly overcast and nice considering how hot the weather was supposed to be (the high for today was forecasted as 97 degrees). Charlotte was super sweet and patient about taking turns with this cute car we got as a hand-me-down from a friend. 

After the boys napped we did our craft for the day! I printed out a couple of these and had the kids work on placing a dot of glue in each circle and then placing a marshmallow. Then we grabbed our flossers and flossed away (and Charlotte may have snacked on a few marshmallows in the process). When we were done, we opened up our KiwiCo box from last month and got to make some playdough, and we played with that alongside some store bought Play-Doh. We haven't done Play-Doh for awhile and it was super fun! It's one of my favorite things to do with the kiddos.

Friday

It's in the 70s today, so we're playing outside with neighbors! No mama pre-school today, the kids are deciding the day today!