Sharks and Teeth

Free graphics source for sharks and tooth: Freepik.com.  Edited and combined.

Ah, yes, I know I'm past due for posting this.  William wanted to study sharks, and I decided teeth were a good thing to pair and an important topic to study.

Sharks

I am not sure where my shark tooth necklace is, which I wanted to show the kids, and I so wish I had the shark jaws my grandma had in her house a long time ago.  She died, and it is thought that she must have taken them to her Headstart class sometime before that.  It would have made a fine addition to this lesson.  In times past, I'd just get on Ebay and buy a set, but we made do without just fine.  They got to see pictures, instead.  ;-)

My Fun with Words, Volume 2 (The Southwestern Company: 1974), s.v. "shark"

The kids watched a few old episodes of "Shark Week" with Amazon Prime.  They learned about various different sharks, including the bull shark that crosses into freshwater.  There was quite a lot to be learned there, and there are so many more unwatched episodes.

I read a few books to them, free on our Kindle, with the exception of one low-priced one on which I used some Amazon Chase reward dollars.  It it laid out in quiz format, and it contained many pictures of a great variety of sharks. My biggest complaint is that it didn't specify all the species with the pictures, and some we didn't know and had to figure out in another way.

Guess that first book wasn't worthy of a cover photo

The kids made sharks with Play-Doh.  I didn't participate myself this time.  I felt tired and not-in-the-mood, and truly for the last month and a half I just got by with school with kids, housework, and everything else.  Now things are getting better again.

William made a cool-looking hammerhead shark, which doesn't look quite as great in my pictures.

Here are Olivia's sharks:

I didn't know the boys had a Play-Doh mold for a shark.  How handy.  Trusten knew it and used it to make his shark! 

That really helped me figure out a fun treat to fix for them, too.  I used the Play-Doh cutter as a cookie-cutter!  I made flour-free peanut butter cookies for everyone.  They were crumbly, but Nathan (who absolutely loves pb cookies, said they were very good).

Our set of animal cards that my friend Shana bought at a yard sale for us last year have come in so handy for some of our studies.  In our "fish" section I found four different sharks.  I personally don't recall ever having learned about a thresher shark before.  I couldn't get over the long wild tail (of course I looked up real pictures on Google Images for us to see).  The thresher shark uses its long tail to thresh the water through schools of fish in order to disorient them and be able to feed on some of them.  The most amazing shark to me, though, is the whale shark, which is the largest fish in the world. I've always respected the whale shark, as it is not a vicious flesh-eating shark.  But wow, are they huge!

These cards keep the kids' attention pretty well, even Trust and Liv.

Teeth

My Fun with Words, Volume 2 (The Southwestern Company: 1974), s.v. "tooth"

I got out our flannel board and went over the different kinds of teeth and the different layers of a tooth and gum and explained why we could feel pain, as well as heat and "cold" in our teeth.  I talked about the function of the different types of teeth in our mouth and how we get two sets of teeth in our lifetime and adults have more teeth than children do.

I showed the kids how important it is to take good care of your teeth by searching in Google Images with terms like "tooth decay," "gum disease," etc.  They were thoroughly sickened by what they saw, even in some children.  The twins looked shocked, and Liv even looked a bit frightened.  Images like those certainly make a lecture on proper tooth care a lot easier and more convincing.  ;-)

Remember the deer skeleton that William gathered up and reassembled last spring?  When he was done with it he'd taken it across the road.  Well, he got the idea to go across and find the skull and beat a jaw away so that he could study the teeth and come show me, of course.  ;-)  He was fascinated studying the section where the teeth were gone.

I apologize for lighting, as I was busy writing with my iPad and simply took a quick shot with my nearby iPhone.

Some teeth books we read:

This book above mainly involved brushing one's teeth to avoid bad breath, but it also talked about what a dentist does and what an orthodontist does.

Below is a page from Consumer Guide's The Big Book of Questions and Answers (Publications International: 1991):

 

My children, on average, have gotten their teeth in later than many.  William is the only one who has naturally lost teeth and didn't lose his first one until he was seven.  I took him to his first dental appointment when he was nine, and he got his teeth cleaned. He had one small cavity that we had filled with a non-mercury filling.  

Trusten (6) has not yet been to a dental check-up, but he did get a tooth partly knocked out a couple years ago, and it was hurting him very badly to eat and brush teeth.  When the dentist could not pull the remainder of the tooth and the root out, we had to take him to an oral surgeon where he was put under general anesthesia.  After that was removed, he felt great.  He refused any pain medication and said he felt so much better.

Below are a couple free books from the Kindle Library, which both discuss tooth decay and the importance of brushing one's teeth.

The FIRST and MOST IMPORTANT thing in good dental health that I really pound into my children is good diet and avoidance of sugary drinks.  An occasional soda, smoothie, or fruit juice doesn't hurt, but constant liquid sugar flowing over the teeth is a big reason, I believe, why so many Americans suffer dental decay.  Bacteria (or "sugar bugs," as the Invisible Aliens books refers to them) constantly eat, eat, eat away at the sugar and eat holes into the teeth. 

I drink mostly water throughout the entire day, and in the last decade and a half or more, I've had one cavity, which must have been there for a long time, but I finally visited a dentist and had it filled two or three years ago. 

I have never been one to give my young children fruit juice regularly, as is so common in our society.  The only child who did have juice somewhat regularly for a short time was William, back when I still drank some store-bought orange juice, but even then I diluted his juice (and mine) with one-third water, two-thirds juice.  Gross, that stuff is way too sweet otherwise, anyway!  Not only does this kind of of practice lead to tooth decay, it also leads to diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, cancer, and on and on...  Way too much sugar! 

Now this is not to say I never make juice or buy juice for the kids, because I sometimes do, and nearly every day we eat a sweet treat of some sort (and not always just fruit, but that is a daily thing).  But we also drink water.

I have read online probably two years ago on this topic and so know many people would have the opinion of me that I deny my children's independence in this area, but that's fine:  I brush my children's teeth until they are three or four and then still gradually transition them into it, meaning when they're three, they may get to brush at their teeth by themselves, but I then make sure it's done properly.  I read once about another woman doing this, and she was bombed by all sorts of ugly feedback regarding a toddler's independence.  Well, "TOO BAD," I thought, because that is how I am, too.  A person can respect their little child's independence and still make sure the scum is brushed off the teeth.  I remember many years ago reading in my pediatrics book that an insanely high percentage of two-year-olds already had so many cavities.  I couldn't believe it!  So years later when I read those people attacking that woman on her child's independence I thought to myself, "Well, now it's no wonder..."  I mean, seriously, don't toddlers want to independently walk into the street and such, too?  I just use different logic, I guess.  And for those who wonder, most of mine have fought tooth and nail (pun intended) when I go to brush their teeth every night, but I get them brushed, anyway.  :-)  One day maybe they'll thank me. 

Anyway, we have other tooth problems to work on, too!  Trusten has a BAD problem of chewing up things he should not, and I've gotten on to that boy so much. He's ruining his teeth, and so I've got to find a way to get him to do the right thing before he starts getting his permanent teeth.  I keep telling him that's all he'll get!  He'd better start doing a better job now. 

That is another thing I discussed with the children:  different animals may get more sets of teeth (like an elephant), whereas many animals get just two sets like we do, rodents' teeth constantly grow throughout their lives, and at least some sharks (like the great white) continually replace teeth once they lose them.

The following picture is from Wikipedia:

William had x-rays when he went to the dentist, and there is a tooth (upper canine or maybe bicuspid, I believe) that is simply non-existent among his permanent teeth, so there will have to be something done in the future, though he says he doesn't want anything done, that he'll just go without.  Oh!  And he's vegetarian now, hasn't eaten meat in a month or longer, and he told me recently that he won't need that canine, anyway, as he is not a meat-eater.  LOL  He'll need braces, too, though.  His baby teeth didn't came in straight, but his top two incisors are slightly bucked and spaced. 

Don't know whether I didn't consume enough calcium with the poor child when pregnant, or whether his missing tooth is due to something else. 

Well, I'm probably missing something, but I count it as amazing that I've actually finished this post now. 

I can hardly wait until spring and the posts I'll do with plants and animals, you know, since that's what I love (and so do my children).

Until next time...