Hands-Off Learning for Busy Parents BOLSTER YOUR CHILD’S LITERACY WITH NEWSELA
Bleaching for the Summer
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEETH WHITENING AT HOME
One of the best ways to greet the summer is with a perfect smile. Few things can boost your mood and self-confidence more than a white smile as you enjoy the sun. However, the pandemic has made many future choices and plans uncertain — especially elective dental visits. At the time this article is being written, most of the country and world is still under self-isolation and stay-at-home orders.
If you’re feeling uncertain this summer about mingling with other people but still want a dazzling smile, you have a couple options!
At-Home Kits You can use a variety of different methods to whiten your teeth at home, including gels, special toothpastes, and whitening strips, which all use different ingredients for the desired effect. Toothpastes use abrasives or low levels of peroxide to help whiten teeth, while whitening strips and gels depend on different levels of concentrated peroxide. You can purchase many of these at a local pharmacy, grocery store, or your dentist’s office. Concerns of Bleaching Being wary of at-home bleaching kits for fear of damaging your teeth or gums is a valid concern. While burned or bleached gums can sometimes result from using at-home kits, purchasing products approved by the American Dental Association (ADA) and using them only as directed will minimize those risks. Any bleaching kit with the ADA’s seal of acceptance shows that it is both effective and safe for you to use at home. Bleaching kits you receive from your dentist are considered professional products and are often more effective and have longer effects than store-bought products. Things to Know Before you head out the door to pick up your own bleaching kit, it’s important to keep in mind that whitening isn’t for everyone. Someone who has tooth-colored restorations, for example, is not a good candidate for teeth whitening. Additionally, individuals with teeth problems such as sensitivity, worn enamel, or gum disease are better off avoiding bleaching treatments. You should also be aware that not all stains can be removed with at-home kits or professional bleaching.
If you are looking for easy-to-implement strategies to improve your child’s literacy at home, check out Newsela. Newsela is a content platform that partners with sources like The Washington Post, Smithsonian.com, and The Economist to provide content that is relevant to the moment on a broad variety of topics. Unlike a newspaper or magazine article, though, the content on Newsela is aligned with Common Core educational standards, meaning that time spent practicing skills with Newsela’s learning exercises will help your child start the next school year ahead. Articles come with questions and multiple-choice answers already written, and kids can choose from over 20 different genres, including current events, sports, and even science. The platform publishes 10 new articles every day, and the level of reading and assessment difficulty is adjustable, so your child can practice reading texts that push them without being frustrating or too difficult. Newsela includes a functionality that allows parents or teachers to manually set a Lexile level — a text difficulty level the reflects your child’s reading ability — but if left unadjusted, Newsela will gather data about how your child performs on assessments to automatically set texts to the appropriate difficulty. Newsela collects data on how your child performs on the standards identified in each assessment, so spending some time looking at that data can help you understand their strengths and weaknesses and fill in any gaps in their learning. Whether you adjust text difficulty or Newsela does, learning about your child’s Lexile can be an excellent way to better understand your child’s strengths and weaknesses, which is essential if you are going to help bolster their literacy.
If you want a brighter smile today, call Auburn Dental Center. Our team can help you find the best product for your teeth or schedule an appointment for in- house teeth whitening.
2 | www.auburndentalcenter.com
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