Alan’s Big Scary Teeth

This is a fantastic book to explore with children in the early years, especially for those children who are animal fanatics. You can take this book in many directions, as you think about a fun-loving alligator who loves to scare, with his big scary teeth. Part three of our oral hygiene series explores, how we can use this beautifully illustrated book, bound to make children laugh to promote good oral hygiene in the early years. Alan is an alligator with a secret, his teeth they are in fact false teeth. Alan wakes up one morning and has lost his teeth, can he still be scary without them? We are going to explore some ways you can use this story within your setting and tell it in a fun and exciting way, with extension activities.

Make a Story Sack

In the early years story sacks are a great way to engage children and keep them focused as you tell a story. They don’t have to be expensive, or shop brought, think about making a home-made story sack and collecting your own items to go alongside the book. For example, using a crocodile and animal puppets, having pretend teeth or false teeth for the children to see and touch and a book with your sack. Having story sacks prepped and ready to go for different books can help you in the busyness of the day (when you might not have time to gather everything for your story) but may also inspire yourself or your team in another way.

Tell the Story in a Sensory Way

Engaging all of children’s senses or using a couple of different ideas to engage senses within storytelling, helps to promote brain development, learning and help children to focus.

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Do you want to find out more about sensory story telling? Why not join out webinar, sensory story tellers in the early years? Click here to find out more.

Clean Alans Big Scary Teeth

As an extension of this story, you can have a go at cleaning Alans’s teeth afterwards. Simply use false teeth (or laminated pictures of teeth) and mark make on them with a whiteboard pen. Then use a toothbrush, toothpaste, and water to brush all the marks of the teeth.

Mirror Play

Can you scare as well as Alan? Set up some mirrors and pictures of people pulling scary faces and see if you can practise pulling a scary face just like Alan in the mirror. It is a great opportunity to talk with children about what makes a face scary and identify the different features of our faces. Children can also look closely at the teeth, eyes, and facial features. You can also incorporate some ICT by taking photos of each other pulling scary faces and add them to the display.

Another mirror play activity you can do is mark-making with toothpastes and toothbrushes on a mirror. This is great for developing children’s gross motor and fine motor skills, sensory development, and interest in making and exploring marks.

Keep an eye out for our next blog to find out, more books that you might use to promote oral hygiene in the early years.