It’s been a marathon race from Wednesday evening to today with no end in sight. With company, it’s always an adventure in coming and going, arriving and leaving, meals, laundry, and of course kids. We’ve had more people in and out of our house than ever before. There were so many for dinner on Thursday, we ate most of the bird.

We were honored to have one of Anne’s friends as a guest, Amir. He was most welcome as he plunged into American food. He didn’t like my cranberry/tangerine relish, but he said some of the tastes were similar to what he eats at home.

This afternoon, Mr. Robbie will be baptized at St. Ben’s after the 4:30 Mass. It’s an exciting time for us.

I hope everyone had an especially nice Thanksgiving. The weather sure has been nice. I hope the kids got some play time and explored the Thanksgiving table with gusto! My grandchildren went to the Zoo. They said it was cooler over there than here in Newburgh.

Next week in school some afternoon changes in the day. We are introducing some new subjects we think the kids will just love. The children will be divided into two groups, the St. Scholastica group and the St. Benedict group for these classes.

As we explore these changes, parents will be notified in letter and on the blog about what we’ve done and what we will be doing permanently. Our goal is to touch every educational base we can every week. Some classes will be team taught, other classes will be individually taught.

It’s been asked that we post menus. We post a general menu and have asked for parents’ input for several months. Please look at the menu posted on the door. Often it’s not known what’s for lunch absolutely until that day. If I plan absolutely for one thing or another on Sunday, and someone brings us a present, or there’s a better plan on Wednesday, we’ll go with it. Menus will be posted on the blog after the fact. If any parent wants to know what we have eaten, what we generally eat, what the kids like best, please ask me.

BY CHRIS DANIELS / KING 5 News

SEATTLE – Gov. Christine Gregoire wants to boost spending for early learning programs. On Tuesday she outlined her plan to a group of supporters in downtown Seattle.

The proposed plan, called Washington Learns includes comprehensive changes in the preschool system. These include expanding training for teachers and a system to measure a child’s readiness for kindergarten.

Proponents believe preschool is an important part of a child’s educational development. They point to studies which show a good foundation can keep certain people out of trouble and away from social services later in life.

“Some of the studies have shown that really 85 percent of the brain is developed before the age of 3, so it’s important the minute children are born they’re learning,” said Jone Bosworth, director of the Department of Early Learning.

Some people have immediately criticized the proposal as too complex, and say that it doesn’t address funding specifics.

Gregoire didn’t talk too much about the finances needed for Washington Learns, but believe educators need to think about the possibilities.

Comment: If the brain is more or less developed by age three, then why must we “wait to teach” until a child is in school?

With the Christmas Season officially begun, here’s a contribution from one of our families that really gets the season started beautifully. Thanks Tami.

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right, I’m out here by choice,
I’m here every night.”

“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘Pearl’ on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram’ always remembers.”

“My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam’,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.”

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue…an American flag.
“I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home”.

“I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother.”

“Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”

“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?”
“It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.”

“For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

Every so often we reach a high point. That’s what we did last week. We reached a high point at school. This weekend it showed. Mrs. St. Louis and I have made some little school changes, some bigger ones to follow, and the writing that has to go into this new Paths to Quality process has kept the Internet busy as well.

We’ve been on the go all weekend. This week is Pilgrim and cooking week. It’s all about history and working together. It should be fun. If we have time, we’ll make cheese and cranberry bread and candy.

Monday’s menu includes a turkey. If any of the parents have a few minutes for lunch, you are welcome.

I’ll post the Mohican words next time.

This is such a darling picture.

More Later.

It was wonderful, so they tell me. I was busy trying to shhhhhhh the next scene out. The children were so cute and did a great job. Thanks so much to Miss Kelly for taking it. Kids are such hams, and the first time they do it, it’s a little daunting, but as you see the growth is remarkable. Next spring when we do the St. Patrick’s Day play the difference will be remarkable.

Thanks to all the parents for the neat treats.

I got a lot of nice pictures from Tami, so I’m going to post them.

This weekend the staff has spent most of our time working on Paths to Quality, a program with 4C that ranks us in a particular level in excellence. We will be working at this consistently.

Our afternoon schedule is changing to offer the children more time learning and doing. We have re-designed it to offer simply more. With Jana on staff, we will be able to do so much more.

Please take note of the changes in the play room as they occur and give us your feedback. We don’t have a great deal of space, but as someone very kind and observant said, “we make good use of every inch,” and we do.

I finally finished the kitchen class – dullest thing on the planet.

More Later

November 2, 2006

Chemical burn from Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Scotchbrite Easy Eraser

Some of you who are marked as friends or family on my flickr account have already seen this, but as Jill pointed out, I probably need to share it just for the sake of public awareness.

I hate writing this and I hate sharing it as there is a lot of guilt wrapped up in it, but here goes.

One of my five year old's favorite chores around the house is cleaning scuff marks off the walls, doors, and baseboards with either an Easy Eraser pad, or the real deal, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I purchased a package of Magic Erasers ages ago when they first came out. I remember reading the box, wondering what the "Magic" component was that cleaned crayon off my walls with ease. No ingredients were listed and absolutely no warnings were on the box, other than "Do not ingest."

My package of the Scotchbrite Easy Erasers didn't have a warning either and since my child knew not to eat the sponges and keep them out of reach of his little brother and sister, it was a chore I happily let him do.

If I had known that both brands (and others like them) contain a harmful alkaline or "base" chemical (opposite of acid on the pH scale) that can burn your skin, I never would have let my little boy handle them. As you can see from the picture, when the Scotchbrite Easy Eraser was rubbed against his face and chin, he received severe chemical burns.

At first, I thought he was being dramatic. I picked him up, put him on the counter top and washed his face with soap and water. He was screaming in pain. I put some lotion on his face - more agony. I had used a Magic Eraser to remove magic marker from my own knuckles a while back and I couldn't understand why he was suddenly in pain. Then, almost immediately, the large, shiny, blistering red marks started to spread across his cheeks and chin.

I quickly searched Google.com for "Magic Eraser Burn" and turned up several results. I was shocked. These completely innocent looking white foam sponges can burn you?

I called our pediatrician, and of course got sent to voice mail. I hung up and called the Hospital and spoke to an Emergency Room nurse. She told me to call Poison Control. The woman at Poison Control said she was surprised nobody had sued these companies yet and walked me through the process of neutralizing the alkaline to stop my son's face from continually burning more every second.

I had already, during my frantic phone calling, tried patting some numbing antibiotic cream on his cheeks, and later some Aloe Vera gel - both resulted in screams of pain. The Poison Control tech had me fill a bathtub with warm water, lay my son into it, cover him with a towel to keep him warm and then use a soft washcloth to rinse his face and chin with cool water for a continuous 20 minutes.

My son calmed down immediately. He told me how good it felt. I gave him a dose of Tylenol and after the twenty minutes was up, he got dressed in his Emergency Room doctor Halloween costume and off we went to the Hospital.

They needed to make sure the chemical burn had stopped burning, and examine his face to determine if the burn would need to be debrided (from my fuzzy recollection of hospital work, this means removing loose tissue from a burn location). My son was pretty happy at the hospital, they were very nice and called him "Doctor" and let him examine some of their equipment. The water had successfully stopped the burning and helped soothe a lot of the pain. I'm sure Tylenol was helping too.

They sent us home with more Aloe Vera gel, Polysporin antibiotic cream, and some other numbing burn creams. By the time we got home, my son was crying again. I tried applying some of the creams but he cried out in pain. Water seemed to be what worked the best.

After a rough night, I took the above photo in the morning. He was swollen and wouldn't move his lips very much to avoid moving the skin on his taut cheeks. I was fighting back the tears, and I said, "Oh honey, I wish I could take it away from you. I wish I could take it off your face and put it on mine." He was so shocked, he started to tear up a little and said, "Mom, no. You don't want this on your face, it hurts so much. You would be hurting. Last night was terrible, I couldn't sleep, and you wouldn't be able to sleep either." It just broke my heart into five trillion pieces - as much as he is hurting, he wouldn't want me to be hurting in his place.

Today he is doing much better. The burns have started to scab over, and in place of red, raw, angry, skin we have a deeper red, rough healing layer. I can touch his skin now, without it stinging, and this morning he went back to Pre-School with Polysporin rubbed all over his face. He announced to the class, "I brought my face for Show and Tell!"

I still feel so badly, I'm supposed to protect my son, yet I stupidly thought these "Magic" products were harmless.

I have called both Mr. Clean and Scotchbrite (3M). Mr. Clean tells me their products now have a warning label that state they should not be used on skin and can cause burns. I could not get through to 3M so I left messages and e-mailed the story through the form on their website.

I just received a response:

Dear Ms. Kerflop,

Thank you for taking time to contact 3M Home Care Division. Feedback from our customers is an integral part of our business and we encourage it. Please know that we have forwarded your message to our marketing and lab departments.

We would appreciate the opportunity to discuss the performance of our product with you, as we would not expect it to behave as you have described. Please call us at your earliest convenience, toll free at 1-800-846-8887, so that I might assist you further and bring this matter to a resolution that is agreeable for you.

Sincerely,

Tina
3M Home Care Divisio

I'll keep you updated. Funny, "we would not expect it to behave as you have described".

Note: I have absolutely no intention of suing the company whatsoever. My son is going to be fine. I would simply like the companies to post appropriate warnings on their products.

Comment: Normally, I would not post this because a lot of these things are just "out there." I've never heard of these products and stick to basic ammonia and Krud Kutter for harder jobs at home, but upon hearing the popularity of these products, and knowing how children can be allergic to certain things, I thought it was probably prudent.

Greetings after a long break!

We’ve been so busy with getting ready for the big yearly inspection, writing time has been really limited. We are writing about the school curriculum, and how the school runs from inside out. We want to achieve something special. We’ve always been interested, but never had the staff that would follow through. This year, we are pulling years of activities together and it’s not easy.

The play goes well. Some of the little kids are a big squaneekish, but you’ll understand later.

School work has been suspended with theater which is is fine art, so don’t panic if your child is not taking home regular school papers. He’s learning something else this week, and that’s good. Theater is an art, a social need in children to explore being on stage and bringing a creation like a play to fruition.

Parents have asked if we need anything for the play. Just snacks and a couple of parent to arrive early to help with costumes.

The costumes that go home after the play are the hats.

FYI: We buy antibacterial soap from a distributer, and our water temperature must be at 171 degrees for dish cleaning. Unfortunately, we had a child who consistently fooled with the plumbing and hurt a few children with too hot water. We have turned down the hot water in the children’s rooms to avoid this scorching, but it is available. Then we found out that lukewarm water is a bacteria trap.

Teachers take particular care in hand washing to avoid such accidents, but at the same time children need to continue to be taught properly how to wash at home. In a childcare facility, hand sanitizer is not a possibility and not recommended because water must be running, and children must wash off the dirt rather than cover it with hand sanitizer. Have you ever wondered what would happen if a child ate hand sanitizer?

Clean hands prevent the spread of disease. We have very little disease at the Garden School in comparison to most early childhood places, and we are proud of that.

Please teach your child how to put his own coat on, and that we park hats and mittens in sleeves not in pockets.

Next week is Pilgrim week. We will be doing a lot of cooking and a lot of talking about food. We are trying to start a food game at school.

Hindustan Times – India

India Needs to Focus More on Preschool Kids

India needs to focus more on care and education of preschool children along with nutritional needs for their proper growth, a senior UNESCO official stated here Wednesday.

“Unless there is sufficient investment in early childhood, the less would be the returns (when the child becomes a working adult),” said Minja Yang, director and UNESCO representative in India, at a function to release the annual “Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007” report.

The report takes a critical look at the fact that despite well-documented benefits for child development and well being, early childhood “area remains the forgotten link in the education chain in many regions, and that half the world’s countries have no early childhood care and education policy for children under age three”.

Early childhood care and education are the first among six “Education for All” goals the world is committed to achieving by 2015.

While the study commends India for contributing significantly to the marked acceleration in primary school enrolments – for both boys and girls – in the South Asian region, it also notes the quality education for the most part suffers due to lack of trained teachers and large scale absentism both of children and teachers and woeful infrastructure.

“I would like to impress on the partners (governments and NGOs) to invest in creating enabling community centres and in rural areas where mothers can get together through different programmes,” said Yang.

She admitted the sheer magnitude of the task makes it difficult for the Indian government to take it on its own.

At the same time, the official was critical, stating, “less than four percent of the budget allocation for education in a country like India is sadly inadequate”.

The fact that 25 million babies are born every year in India despite efforts to promote family planning is a major factor for the neutral growth in the government’s efforts to raise level of literacy and ensure education for all at the primary and secondary level in the country.

Comment: It’s interesting how the West is screaming for babies and the East has so many.

NestLingue puts two cultures into preschool days

Bilingual program fills childcare needs for business park

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 23rd, 2006

For once, Vladimíra Šlegrová followed the voice in her heart — and managed to make her 2-year-old daughter coo with joy.

Mixing the two forces has led to the launch of a new Czech-English bilingual school for toddlers and preschoolers in Prague 4�

Chodov. The new school, NestLingue, will open Sept. 4 on the site of a hub for fast-developing businesses, Chodov Park. Neighbors will be high-tech investors such as DHL, Accenture and IBM. What’s more, additional bilingual NestLingue schools could open in Prague in the near future.

Last year, Šlegrová’s little girl attended a kindergarten in Prague where the children were taught according to the Montessori method, which is based on a child-centered approach to education. The concept is built around children’s need to learn, examine, discover and communicate about things they are surrounded by.

Šlegrová, a mother of two who formerly worked as a lawyer and manager, realized this was an idea she wanted to further develop.

“This time, I followed my emotions rather than mere business calculations,” Šlegrová says when describing the roots of NestLingue. “I did not care that much about the actual return of my initial investment, but about the challenge of developing a beneficial project.”

In order to distinguish NestLingue from dozens of kindergartens and preschools in Prague, Šlegrová bet on two key features.

First, she built in the bilingual Czech-English educational program.

“There are many Czech schools and several schools with education in a foreign language. But there are few if any schools that offer bilingual education,” Šlegrová explains.

Second, Šlegrová attempted to make her preschool affordable to a greater number of parents by setting lower fees than most of the competitors that offer education in a foreign language. While monthly tuition can reach up to 25,000 Kč ($1,140) in Prague, NestLingue’s fee is 15,000 Kč.

“If we followed the usual market prices, it would be more difficult to penetrate the market,” Šlegrová says.

More to come

The school is open to children from 18 months to 6 years old and is divided into two programs: toddlers and preschoolers (ages 3 to 6). Children can attend in the morning, the whole day and on all or selected weekdays.

In the first year, NestLingue will be ready for up to 35 children — 15 toddlers and 20 preschoolers.

Šlegrová revealed that some 15 children, both Czech and foreign, had already been pre-registered by mid-August.

“Foreigners tend to better perceive the value of good-quality education for their children from a very early age,” Šlegrová says. “Many Czech parents tend to think there is no need to rush with educating their children and that it can start when they are about 6 years old.”

The location of the school, in the business park in Chodov, also makes it attractive, especially for executives working in the neighboring business facilities.

“We’ve considered that aspect when selecting the location. Parents working in the Park will be able to visit their children even during the day and see what they are doing.”

NestLingue plans to actively cooperate with parents, who are encouraged to consult with the six teachers, both Czechs and Americans, on any matter related to the development of their kids.

Parents will receive biannual reports summarizing children’s progress and lecturers must not only be native speakers but must be qualified to teach.

“We’ve had three Czechs and three Americans so far,” Šlegrová says, adding that teachers from the United Kingdom, where the Montessori education method is less popular, have not been brought on board so far.

Depending on demand, NestLingue may well in expand into Prague 6 and Prague 1, says the upbeat new academic. But no massive expansion is planned, she cautions.

“We want to focus on top quality, and this can only be achieved with small numbers.”

Comment: Sounds a lot like us only we’re cheaper still.