From the Wall Street Journal — Where Could The Next Outbreak Of Measles Be?

Even as more American children are getting immunized against measles, diphtheria and other diseases, public-health officials are increasingly worried about potential outbreaks of these illnesses in certain pockets of the country where vaccination rates are dangerously low.
…
Health experts say a community needs about 95% of its citizens to be immunized against measles to ensure herd immunity, where vaccinating a large percentage of a population keeps even unvaccinated people from getting the disease. Even people who aren’t vaccinated, such as newborns, get some protection from herd immunity as the disease remains limited to a small part of the community. Measles is a highly contagious respiratory condition that can lead to encephalitis, pneumonia and death. Other diseases, depending on how contagious they are, require other rates of immunization for a community to benefit. For mumps, 88% need to be immunized, and for chickenpox and polio the rate is 90%.

As a licensed NJ child care center, The Montessori House requires parents to comply with NJ immunization requirements.  You can find out more in this Q&A and this Chart of NJ Immunization Requirements.

The Montessori House has started the process of enrolling students for the 2012-13 school year.  

Since we fill up our full-day and morning sessions first., we urge families to submit their application for 2012-13 soon, especially if interested in a program that offers a full-day or morning session.  These include our full-day Kindergarten (age 5-6) and full-day Pre-Primary plus Enrichment  (age 3-4) sessions, and our morning Pre-Primary (age 3-4) and morning Stepping Stones (age 2.5-3) sessions.

We’ve already offered 2012-13 placement to families with children currently at The Montessori House, and these families have until January 10, 2012 to provide us a reservation tuition deposit for their preferred 2012-13 program. 

Shortly after January 10, 2012 we’ll start to offer placement to new applicants, more or less in the order paid applications were received at the school.   As with our current families, we ask new applicants to confirm their preferred session and provide us a reservation tution deposit to hold a 2012-13 place for their child. 

At some point in the admissions process, our Director likes to become personally acquainted with new applicants.  Sometimes these meetings take place before an enrollment offer is made, and sometimes after.  We start to schedule these meetings in Janaury. 

We continue to offer placement in a session until that session is filled, at which point we’ll start a session wait list.  A family may choose to enroll in an alternate session, but still join the wait list for their preferred session.  

Again, we urge families interested in 2012-13 to submit an application soon, as we expect some sessions will fill up very quickly. 

For more information please contact us at admissions@themontessorihouse.com or call 201-816-8343.

We certainly enjoyed our Thanksgiving Feast at school last week: turkey, potatoes, vegetables, pumpkin smoothies, and cranberry bread!

Thanks to all the parents (Cultural Events Committee and Nutrition Committee) who made it so special.

Here’s the recipe for the Grandmother’s Famous Cranberry Bread (makes 1 loaf):

Preparation

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda into a large bowl. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Add egg, orange peel, and orange juice all at once; stir just until mixture is evenly moist. Fold in raisins and cranberries. Spoon into a greased 9 X 5 X3 inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hr 10 mins or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from pan; cool on a wire rack. If you choose, you may substitute cranberries for the raisins to have an all cranberry bread.

Diana M. (chair of the Art Appreciation Committee) will be preparing a presentation on George Seurat for March.  She’s planning to do a movable mosaic as part of the unit.  However, she needs your help!

Please bring in your bottle caps (the plastic screw caps from drink bottles are great) and deposit them in the box Diana has left by the front door. 

You can see examples here.  Thanks in advance to you and to Diana for putting it all together!

Power has been restored to The Montessori House and school reopens on the regular schedule, Wednesday, November 2nd.

First, the parking lot is closed on the Knickerbocker Rd. side, as is the regular entrance to The Montessori House and the playground. These are closed pending tree trimming and clean-up, which we hope to complete this week. In the meantime, please enter the school through the Church/Tween Tot door off the east side of the parking lot closest to Riveredge. Note, Parent Visitation continues as scheduled, with this week’s Monday and Tuesday visits rescheduled for next week (Monday and Tuesday with the same appointment times).

Finally, we have moved the deadlines for tuition payment, school picture orders, and Scholastic book orders, all to Friday, November 4th.

Still without power at 7 p.m. Monday.  We will be closed on Tuesday, November 1st.

Our playground is littered with large branches and will need professional attention and repairs (to fences after branches are removed) before it’s safe for the children.

We hope power returns before Wednesday, and will continue to keep parents posted.

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t had an e-mail or NEWS post that confirms when the school will reopen, please call the office and listen to the message.  Without power, our access to internet is limited, but we can always update the phone message.

We currently have no power at The Montessori House, and much of Tenafly has no power this Sunday morning. 

Right now we plan to open school on schedule tomorrow, Monday, October 31st. 

We will provide an update on school closing two ways:

1. Here in NEWS on the website.
2. Via the phone message at 201-816-8343. 

If possible we will send an e-mail update as well.  In case you see no further update in NEWS \, this means we’ve lost internet communications.  In that case, PLEASE CALL 201-816-8343 Monday morning for the latest information.

The Nutrition Committee has been hard at work since mid-September serving tasty, healthy, and interesting daily snacks to all the children at The Montessori House.  Committee members generally each take a week of “snack duty”; “snack duty” rotates among committee members. 

Here’s what Polly provided the week of October 17th.  

• Monday: water crackers and provolone cheese, a bag of apples and yogurt, water crackers
• Tuesday: pear raisin bread pudding, raisins in mini box
• Wednesday: sweet potato puree with carrot and celery sticks
• Thursday: veggie sushi platter (from Mr. WOK)
• Friday: banana bread, banana

This week Clara brought us: bananas, popcorn chips, vegi platter, hummus, and organic applesauce.  And the Nutrition Committee also helped the children prepare pumpkin smoothies. 

We wonder what Benita will bring us next week!

If you’d like to sign-up for “snack duty”, join the Nutrition Committee via the Parents section of the website.

On Wednesday, 10/26/11, parent volunteers made pumpkin smoothies with the children at the Montessori House. 

With their Montessori training and expertise in “practical life”, the children did the measuring, the blending, and the pouring themselves.  of course the parents and teachers helped them with the drinking!  The smoothies were a great hit! 

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try this at home!

• Measure out the following:
  • ¼ cup milk
  • 2 tablespoons canned pumpkin
  • 1 teaspoon (rounded) sugar
  • Pinch of cinnamon
  • Smaller pinch of nutmeg
  • Put measured ingredients in blender to blend till smooth.
  • Drink up!

Sorry we’re so late with this, but we had a wonderful Fall Festival at The Montessori House on October 15!.  Thanks to the entire Special Events Committee and Committee Chair Celia P.

And thanks to all the Montessori House families who brought wonderful things to eat and drink, who helped set up the festival, supervise the kids’ activities, and helped clean-up at the end.

The Farmer’s Market raised enough money to donate through Heifer International the following animals: 

chickens, ducks and honeybees!

Thanks!