First trip to the dentist!

The title of this post probably tipped you off, but just in case you missed it...Bella had her first trip to the dentist on Tuesday!  By a happy accident, we spent Monday preparing for the trip.

Some back story: when I decided to stay home with Bella, I was very excited.  And very nervous.  I was worried about coming up with my own activities and such for her, so we looked into a number of different curricula.  We ended up settling on a 3-6 year old Montessori curriculum from NAMC (see my original post here and the NAMC website here).  But we also test drove a curriculum from a company called Mother Goose Time. (see their website here)  It provides very detailed, day by day curriculum for preschoolers, with most of the supplies and such included, with songs and art projects.  It is directed at a wide age range though, so not all of the projects are age appropriate.  Basically, I pull out a day's curriculum when I want a good art project or we get bored.  Rainy day type stuff.  We're on about day 6 or 7 of the month and we got it in January, that's how much we use it.  But it is good to get me thinking outside of my usual day to day stuff.  Their curriculum is themed, and I purchased a month's curriculum where the theme was 'Dress Up Jobs.'  And as luck would have it, the day I pulled out on Monday was the job of Dentist. Crazy lucky!  (Actually, pulling out that curriculum reminded me that I needed to make her an appointment and we were fortunate enough that they had an opening the next day.)


So we got to talk a lot about what a dentist does.  Bella loves brushing her teeth, so it wasn't too hard.  We talked about the difference between a hair brush and a tooth brush (using a bag to just feel both and try to tell the difference).

The art project included a tan colored paper tooth, that we painted using a toothbrush with some white paint, pretending to brush it.  It fit pretty nicely into the Montessori mindset.  I could definitely see using a toothbrush to make art again, maybe even with actual toothpaste instead of paint.

 Bella was very proud of her art, and we took it with us to the dentist office as a sort of 'peace offering.'

I also had the opportunity to pull out the Metal Insets.  I'll do more of post about the insets soon, but here is half of our set to give you an idea of what they look like.  We bought our's at Alison's Montessori (their website here) because making my own using foamboard or corrugated plastic sounded like a task I wasn't up for. (I stink at using an Exacto knife)

I realized from one of the activities in the Mother Goose set that I could have her use the rectangle shape as the head of a toothbrush, with the lines through the rectangle as bristles.

Then I helped her draw on a handle and we got to talk more about the dentist.

So, with our peace offering in hand, we headed to the dentist.  I was hoping it would endear my child to them so they would be patient with her.  And it totally worked!  They may have been that patient anyway, but the artwork certainly didn't hurt anything.

They let Bella check out the toothpaste, tooth polisher, suction straw, and mirror.

And they even gave her a pair of cool shades to help shade her from the light.

She let them count her teeth (20 if you were curious - though she keeps saying she has 3 for some reason).  She let them polish her teeth, and she even let them scrape them a bit.  Overall, a very positive and productive trip.  She came home with a ridiculous amount of swag: a little glittery bag with a new toothbrush, toothpaste, a purple nitrile glove, floss, a sticker, and clean teeth.

Have your kids had their first trip to the dentist?  Do you remember yours?  Is it possible to not dread going every 6 months?