Delivering a Tooth Brushing Programme in your Nursery
As set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Framework, early years providers are required to promote the good oral health of children. This has been included because good oral health habits need to be formed from an early age. Tooth decay is largely preventable, but it’s still a serious problem among young children, effecting around a quarter (25%) of 5 year olds!
Help for Early Years Providers has added new guidance on promoting good oral health (opens in new tab) in the early years.
The guidance:
- explains the importance of good oral health for early years children
- helps practitioners to meet the oral health requirement in the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework
- includes practical tips and activities to use in early years settings
- links to further reading and resources.
Promoting Oral Health
You can decide how you promote oral health, based on what works best in your setting. It’s a good idea to link oral health to things you already promote, like self-care, healthy eating and physical development. Try to be creative and imaginative, for example:
- Encourage children to brush the teeth of dolls or soft toys.
- Use large teeth models and brushes for children to practice on.
- Read stories about keeping teeth happy and healthy.
- Talk about tooth friendly food and drinks that help to grow strong teeth, and those that we should limit as they’re no so tooth friendly (be mindful about the language you use and avoid labelling foods as ‘good’ and ‘bad’).
- Roll play going to the dentist- book children and teddies in for check-ups!
Another great way to promote and support good oral health is by delivering a supervised tooth brushing programme.
What is a Supervised Tooth Brushing Programme?
Delivering a supervised tooth brushing programme in your early years setting supports children to integrate tooth brushing into their daily routines.
Once trained, practitioners will be able to support children to:
- Correctly wash their hands
- Brush all surfaces of the teeth for 2 minutes – front teeth, back teeth, biting surface, outside, inside, upper and lower teeth
- Brush the tongue
- Spit toothpaste out and not rinse.
Practitioners will also gain confidence in discussing the importance of tooth brushing and good oral health practices with families so they can continue these at home.
Resources
To make sure more children get to benefit from taking part in supervised toothbrushing programmes, a new website has been developed, as part of a national research project, to include resources needed by all those involved in getting toothbrushing programmes set-up and running well.
You can view the Brush toolkit here (opens in new tab). It was developed to bring together new and existing resources to help support the implementation of supervised toothbrushing programmes and clubs.
How can our setting take part?
There are various schemes that support the roll out of a Supervised Tooth Brushing Programme, but it’s best to speak to your local authority (opens in new tab) about it and read the supervised tooth brushing programme toolkit (opens in new tab) from Public Health England.
Online Oral Health Training
Oral health promotion training is another great way of ensuring your staff have a basic understanding of what good oral health is.
Our Oral Health Promotion online training (opens in new tab) explores the factors that can impact on children’s oral health, such as diet, tooth brushing and dental visits.
Practitioners will also learn useful tips and strategies to help them support families in looking after their children’s teeth at home.
If you are a Newham Early Years setting contact the Early Start Nutrition team today (opens in new tab) for a code to access the training for FREE!
Book now for only £36! (opens in new tab)
Hi just wanted to check if the online training for Oral Health covers supervised brushing teeth please. Thank you
Hi Fuazia, If you would like to sign up to the Supervised Toothrbrushing programme you can contact the Dental Wellness Trust Charity via email: Charity@dentalwellnesstrust.org
The Oral Health Promotion training will support you to meet the EYFS requirements for oral health and has lots of great tips and resources to support children and families to learn how to look after their teeth.
Early Start Nutrition