If you have a dentist visit coming up, are trying to get a recalcitrant toddler to brush his or her own teeth, or just want to instill good dental habits early on, this project is adorable and useful!

It starts out with a hunt through magazines for food pictures, which Travis thought was heaps of fun. Use family-friendly magazines like Family Fun, Parents, or Family Circle and you’ll come up with lots of food pictures in no time.

We might have gotten a little side-tracked ripping out the rest of the pages for a while…

I cut two teeth shapes from white paper and drew a smile on one and a sad frown on the other before setting both before Travis. We went through our pile of food clippings item by item, and I asked him which tooth he thought it belonged on – the happy or the sad.

He seemed sheepish about the quiz at first, because we don’t eat much sugar, so I’ve never really had a talk with him about things that are “sad” for your teeth. Needless to say, he thought cookies and pie were happy, and I helped him understand that the things going on the “sad” tooth were the treats to have once in a while, and the ones on the “happy” tooth were the ones we wanted to be eating every day.

He got surprisingly into it (not to mention loved using his glue stick!).

When we were finished, I hung the teeth up near our bathroom sink; they’ll be a great talking point when we brush from now on!