Take a Smiley Selfie

The Smiley has been a staple of National Smile Month since 2014 and used to spread good oral health messages across the globe thanks to social media.

Here is how to get involved:

• Head over to our shop to order Oral Health Foundation’s iconic Smiley.

• Take a selfie with a Smiley and post it on your social media. Don’t forget to show your smile behind it or even take a video of showing off both.

• Make sure to include #SmileMonth so we can see your lovely photos.

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Swap out your sugary snacks

A simple thing you can do every day for National Smile Month is make an extra effort to cut out sugar from your diet, and one of the easiest ways you can do this is with your snack choices. These are a few easy swaps you can make:

• Challenge yourself not to add sugar to hot drinks. If you need the sweetness, go for a sweetener instead.

• Choose water or milk over fizzy drinks.

• Keep fruit juices to mealtimes rather than having throughout the day. You can also dilute them with water.

• For savoury snacks, opt for nuts instead of crisps. If you’re allergic, you can try carrots and hummus instead.

• For a bigger challenge, you can make all your own pasta sauces instead of buying pre-made jars. But remember, don’t add any sugar.

Use our daily health checklist

Incorporating oral health into general health is a vital step to keeping on top of your daily routine and building good habits. You can now do both thanks to this handy checklist.

• Download and print this oral health checklist (opens in new page).

• Put it up somewhere you will see it every day.

• Check off each goal you complete.

• Try it again the following week and aim to cross more off each day. 

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Take on a series of two-minute challenges

Calling all budding Taskmasters!

Two minutes might seem like a short amount of time, yet most of us are falling short of this target every time we brush our teeth.

From speedy jigsaw solving to star jumps and plate spinning, we've created a series of simple challenges you can do to test just how much can be done in two minutes.

• Use a series of little fun games to test what other tasks you can do in two minutes.

• You can either download our examples here or create your own.

Your time starts now!

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Bring tooth fairy magic to the classroom

With our free resources you can take on the magic of the tooth fairy and encourage children to improve their oral health routines.

For the children

• Write a letter to the tooth fairy about how they are looking after their mouths, including their favourite tooth-friendly foods.

For the tooth fairy (you!)

• Use our tooth fairy letter template to create your response letter, or create your own from scratch if you are feeling creative.

• Print and distribute them to your children or classroom.

• If you want to give your class a reward from the tooth fairy, we sell lots of goody bag items in our online shop.

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Download and use Dental Buddy

Dental buddy is our free resource designed for early years, key stage 1 and key stage 2. They can be used either at school or at home.

They include premade lesson plans, presentations, and worksheets designed to teach children about good oral health.

Dental Buddy's messages for children are simple:

• Brush your teeth for two minutes twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste.

• Have a balanced diet and learn the importance of cutting down on how often you have sugary foods and drinks.

• Visit the dentist regularly, as often as they recommend.

Complete this form to download Dental Buddy

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Host a quiz

Who doesn’t love a pub quiz?

• Get a team together and test friends and family on their oral health knowledge.

• You can challenge yourself and write your own rounds, or use our premade ones.

• Choose from picture rounds to test your knowledge of the mouth or general knowledge for some dental trivia.

For classroom quizzes, we also have some official Kahoots you can use made with our Dental Buddy curriculum. You can find them here.

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Host a smile-friendly picnic

Host a picnic with only tooth-friendly foods and share pictures of your spread on social media. This is the perfect half term or bank holiday activity and it’s bound to make all your friends jealous!

Here are some examples of tooth-friendly picnic foods from our experts: 

• Cheese and apple slices.

• Spinach and chicken salad.

• Carrot sticks and hummus. 

• Whole wheat wraps with grilled chicken avocado and lettuce.

You could even experiment with baking some sugar-free cakes. 

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Make a National Smile Month display for your workplace

Every year we are blown away by the displays made and put up in local communities. Why not challenge yourself and make your own?

Here are some things you can do:

• Explain how diet and oral health are linked.

• Show people how much sugar is in their favourite drinks and the damage this could be doing to their mouths.

• Have plaque disclosing tablets on hand to show people spots they might be missing when they brush.

• Test people’s brushing techniques with educational models.

You can find lots of things for your display such as smileys, posters and models in our online shop here.

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Host a lunch and learn for a local business

These are a great way to get information from professionals first-hand to the local community.

There are lots of challenges in the wider community with diet and oral health - from overeating and snacking in offices to junk food on-the-go lunches for logistics and lorry drivers - so there are loads of opportunities to educate the public on the role of diet in oral health.

Here are a few examples of topics you could host a lunch and learn on:

• Why chewing sugar-free chewing gum after meals can help your oral health.

• The importance of a good brushing technique.

• The effect that caffeinated drinks like tea, coffee, and energy drinks are having on your teeth.

• The benefits of cleaning between your teeth.

• How to make smarter food choices for your mouth.

• The effects of hidden sugars. You can purchase our sugar kits here.

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Organise a toothbrush exchange

So many of us don’t change our toothbrush or toothbrush heads as often as we should.

This National Smile Month activity is designed to encourage your patients to bring in their old toothbrush to your event and walk away with a brand new one.

Here is how to get started:

• Browse our online shop for toothbrushes and brushing kits.

• Advertise your exchange in your workplace and on social media using our templates.

• Collect old toothbrushes and offer patients new ones.

• See if you can recycle the old toothbrushes you receive.

This can also be a great activity for schools and children’s clubs too.

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Organise an educational visit to a local school

School visits can be simple and effective. Resources are available to educate children on the basic messages all the way up to some of the more detailed ways in which they can improve their oral health.

Why not give it a try?

Next steps

• Contact your local school/s and propose a visit from your dental practice during National Smile Month.

• Decide on the date and whether you are visiting for simply one lesson, or a whole morning or afternoon.

• Finalise what you are going to do. We have some great ideas below to get you started.

• Choose who will visit the school and run the lessons, making sure their practice diary is blocked out for that period.

Things you can do in the classroom

• Educational talks.

• Question and answer session.

• Brushing demonstrations.

• Quizzes.

• Colouring activities and wordsearches.

You can buy a range of resources perfect for school visits in our online shop.

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Keep yourself hydrated

Lots of us don’t drink enough water through the day. Most adults need about 2 to 2.5 litres of fluid a day, which is around 8 glasses, which may seem like a lot, but over the day with frequent sips can be easily achieved.

Use the five weeks of National Smile Month to push yourself to drink more water, and by the end of it you’ll be able to have your daily recommended intake without even thinking about it.

You can even use our daily checklist to monitor your water intake with its handy water tracker.

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Compose the perfect healthy plate

Get children thinking about what they put into their bodies and the impact it has on their mouths. How many portions of proteins or carbs should you have compared to things like fruits and veggies? Here is how to fill in our healthy plates:

• Download and print our healthy plate template.

• Fill in this plate printout with all the foods you can think of for each category.

• Check your plate items with the Gov.uk Eat Well list and see how many made it on.

• See which items of food on your plate you can swap out to add more from our list.

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