We received La Primera Aventura del Ratoncito Perez by José Carlos Andrés and Betania Zacarias in our latest Sol Book Box and I cannot tell you how much I LOVED this book. Some of you may be familiar with the story of el Ratoncito Perez–I grew up with the tooth fairy, but I know many of you out there looked forward to losing a tooth so el Ratoncito Perez would leave a small gift in exchange. Whatever your household tradition, I think you’ll enjoy this book!
Here’s a great video of the ‘prequel’ to the Ratoncito Perez myth. My favorite part about the story is how cleverly the characters’ dialogue is written, which makes it easy to come up with new, silly voices. And the kids and I really enjoyed the illustrations, which you’ll also be able to preview here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xun6kn_SrKw?ecver=1&w=560&h=315]
I also thought it might be fun to incorporate activities and printable coloring pages to build upon the book’s theme. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much is already out there!
If you have mega blocks, play doh, and some sort of string or pipe cleaners, then this is an extremely easy idea to get your kids excited about flossing and brushing teeth.
(more on this craft, and others, here)
If your kid likes coloring, these printables could be fun for them, and you could have them use old tooth brushes (or new if that seems too icky) to paint, as suggested here. If using paint like this at home (understandably) makes you nervous, I highly recommend Kwik Stix, which are essentially tempera paint sticks with great bold colors that dry quickly, go on smoothly, involve minimal clean up, and don’t require a paint (or tooth!) brush.
If your kids like coloring, mazes and other good 5-minute easy entertainments, here is a sampling of the many great Ratoncito Perez printables also available here for free:
If you want to go a math route, loose tooth subtraction printables are also available here. And some more ideas for learning to brush teeth are here and here.
Do you have any Ratoncito Perez or other activities that get your kids excited about dental hygiene? (Did you think you’d get excited about this kind of thing before you had kids?) Please share!
(Some of the links above are affiliate links, for which I may receive a small percentage from Amazon if you make a purchase through this link)