Parts of a Tooth Play-doh Model

When I was teaching dental health to my son a couple of weeks ago, I wanted him to learn the basic parts of a tooth.  I wanted him to understand that there’s more to a tooth than what we can see in our mouths.  But I wasn’t sure how well as a 5 year old he would grasp that, so I thought it would be best to speak his love language: Play-doh!

Parts of a Tooth Model

I tried this homemade play-doh recipe for our project and it was really great!  I left most of the play-doh white, but added a little red and a little yellow food coloring to some of it to make the other colors.

My son started out by using the red play-doh to make a small tooth shape.  He was able to do this pretty easily on his own.  This part will eventually represent the pulp.

Next, he made a long snake shape out of the yellow play-doh and wrapped it around the outside of the red tooth.  This will represent the dentin.

Then, I had him make another long snake shape out of white play-doh, but this time thicker, and wrap it around the outside of the tooth.  This will represent the enamel.

We finished our model with just a little shaping here and there to maintains its tooth shape.

Finally, we discussed the different parts of a tooth.  I cut out labels for each part of the tooth and we used yarn to show where those parts were on our model.

My son grabbed a pencil and start poking holes in the play-doh dentin.  At first I said, “No, wait!  What are you doing?”, thinking he was just playing around. But, he said, “You said it was porous like a sponge so I’m putting holes in it like a sponge.”  Sometimes we never know just all those little brains are absorbing!

We ended the activity with him labeling a diagram of a tooth by gluing on labels to show each part. By using a concrete model first, it’s much easier for kids to move on to a more abstract concept.

This activity is part of my larger dental health unit that you can find here. It includes a week-long lesson plan with dental-themed math, science, reading, phonics, writing, and art activities.