Thursday, September 10, 2009

First Day Down

First off, I want to apologize for not posting lately. My laptop has been put out of commission and I am taking longer than expected to get things back up and running on an older computer.

Tuesday was the big day. As many parents of peanut-allergic children, we were nervous wrecks the day before and on edge the morning of. But I am happy to report that everything went extremely well.

All of the class lists were posted on the outside walls of the school, and the teachers were mingling about their individual areas of the schoolyard to meet the students and parents. We found each of the boys’ areas and Joseph ran off to play with friends – Grade 6’s won’t wait with their parents :)

Keeghan’s and Liam’s classrooms are across the hall from each other, so we were able to wait in the same area for them to meet with both teachers. When the bell rang, we headed up to Liam’s classroom to help with the morning routine.

The children swapped their outdoor shoes for newer indoor ones and then placed their lunchboxes on a table and shelves outside the classroom.

lunchboxes
lunchboxes waiting patiently

Then Liam’s teacher took the class on a tour to show them where the washrooms were – and wash their hands as part of their morning routine – then back to the classroom where Krystyne had prepared a little talk about allergies – we need to get a copy of Allie the Allergic Elephant for Liam. We also had Be a PAL cards (from the PBS Kids’ Hooray for Health activity book) for the teachers to give out. Then Krystyne and I were off to follow up with the Vice Principal.

The really cool thing was that within the novella of take-home notices from the school that night we found the Peanut Alert notice that the Principal drafted based on Krystyne’s letter to parents that she had created for Liam’s Kindergarten class. AND the one-page notice that alerted parents to the fact that there are peanut-allergic students asked (in bold) for cooperation to make the school a peanut-free school.

Liam went through Junior and Senior Kindergarten with no reactions at school – we’re praying that this streak continues … and big brother Joseph has volunteered to be a lunch monitor for Liam’s class again this year, so he’ll help keep his brother safe.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad that the first day went well. (I understand about the computer problems. I just got my computer issues fixed- IE had been crashing on me constantly. I'm happy to be catching up on allergy blogs!) I went in and read Allie the Allergic Elephant to my son's kindergarten class. They enjoyed the story and I think it was an effective food allergy introduction for the kids.

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