Dental health is so important in the early years, and the best way to get kids excited about it is to make it fun! When it comes to losing a tooth, what kid doesn’t get excited about the prospect of a glittery fairy doling out coins and prizes? Today, we had the opportunity to check out a new picture book that takes the tooth fairy myth in a fun new direction as she battles with the prank queen for top status. We also had some fun with a variety of tooth fairy activities inspired by the story.

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How to Trick the Tooth Fairy was written by Erin Danielle Russell and illustrated by Jennifer Hansen Rolli. Kaylee is a little girl who loves to pull pranks on people. When she comes face to face with the Tooth Fairy, the ruling prank princess, who will come out on top? As their pranks get bigger and more crazy, they must learn to work together and stop trying to outdo one another.

The story is full of funny situations that will have kids laughing out loud, and the vibrant illustrations do a great job of depicting the escalating situation. At the end of the day, the two characters learn an important lesson about teamwork and friendship.

Make a Yummy Treat Inspired By the Story!

Fairy Dust Cookies – At the end of the story, the girls come together while sharing a plate of delicious fairy dust cookies. We decided to try making our own as well!

Encourage kids to get as involved as they want to with the process. My daughter’s favorite activities are dumping the ingredients into the bowl and turning on the mixer. (She also loves cracking eggs, but this is a skill that we are still working on). For this recipe, we made a version of Mexican Wedding Cake cookies similar to this recipe from Betty Crocker, without the additional powdered sugar on the outside.

While the cookies are cooling, mix together confectioner’s sugar and milk to create a frosting. Continue adding a little of each until your frosting reaches the desired consistency. To add in some mischief like the characters in the book, you can separate the frosting into smaller containers and add different flavoring to each one. We used lemon, orange and anise flavorings in ours. Since the flavorings don’t have any color, each cookie was a surprise!

Frost the cookies with your frosting (or frostings), then sprinkle on some sparkle. My daughter chose these star sprinkles and pink sugar from Wilton. There are lots of amazing sprinkles companies popping up now, so decorating cookies can be even more fun!

Dramatic Play with the Tooth Fairy

Fairy Wands – My daughter loves dressing up as a fairy and using all kinds of magical wands. So I was inspired by the illustrations in this book to create our own Tooth Fairy wands. We started out with popsicle sticks and attached a foam tooth shape to the ends. You can provide kids with glitter (eek!), ribbons, and stickers to decorate with as well. When our wands were finished and dried, we used them to fly around the house and pretend to wreak all kinds of tooth fairy mayhem, just like in the story.

Dramatic Play – My daughter loves to play dentist and doctor. I try to encourage her to mimic the doctor and dentist visits in order to make them less frightening when her appointments roll around. We take turns being the dentist and patient, and call each other into the exam room. She found a sleep mask in our playroom and decided that it reminded her of a dentist mask. We pretend to write on dental charts, go through the steps of a dental check up, and check each other’s smiles. I love seeing her use her imagination to create new situations for us to act out.

Tooth Fairy Activities That Practice Important Skills

Find the Tooth – Get kids moving with this tooth fairy inspired gross motor game! Cut a medium sized tooth out of cardstock. Hide it around the house or yard and have kids search for it. The first person to find it gets to be the tooth fairy and hide it the next time. This simple game can provide hours of entertainment (especially if you are trapped inside on a rainy day!).

How Many Teeth? – This counting game uses the frogs in the story as inspiration. Print out this free frog printable. Provide kids with a small amount of mini marshmallows. While you call out numbers, or roll a die, kids have to add the correct number of marshmallow “teeth” to the frog’s mouth. This game not only provides practice with counting, but also includes a delicious snack at the end!

Click here for more dental health games!

This book is a fun way to make dental health a fun and interesting topic for kids. Do you have any tooth fairy traditions in your family? How do you make dental health interesting for your kids? Share in the comments below!

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