Practice your flossing skills by creating a marshmallow mouth with Arizona PBS education student intern, Faith Wheelington! Craft a mouth made from construction paper and marshmallows to learn how and why you should be flossing your teeth.
Using liquid glue, scissors, sharpie, construction paper, and yarn, you can create a mouth to teach you how to floss your teeth! First, fold a piece of pink construction paper in half and draw half of an oval, then cut it out so that you have the base for your mouth. Do the same with the red piece of construction paper using the base you cut out as an outline. Within that half of an oval, do the same thing but smaller. Cut out the smaller part to act as a tongue for the model. Decorate it to look like a tongue and glue it within the mouth base. Glue down the marshmallows around the perimeter of the tongue, giving it ten to twenty minutes to dry. While you wait, take your other construction paper and rip off small pieces, crumpling them into balls to act as bacteria between the marshmallow teeth. Take a piece of yarn to act as your piece of floss, wiggling it between the marshmallow teeth to remove the pieces of paper bacteria.
This demonstration allows you to get more practice with flossing with a larger scale model, which should make it easier to understand how to floss as well as the purpose of flossing. It shows that it’s important to floss at least once a day so that you can get the bacteria and food debris out from between your teeth so that you don’t develop cavities. Apply the flossing techniques you practiced with this craft to your dental hygiene routine to keep your real smile clean and healthy!