Rowe School Health Office
It's Chapped Lip Season!
With the return of the cold and dry air, the kid's lips are getting very chapped and even cracking! Please put a labeled lip balm in your child's backpack or coat pocket.
Lice Prevention
With colder weather brings thoughts of warm turkey dinners, hot soups, bundling in winter jackets, prepping snowblowers and tuning winter sports equipment.
Cold weather is also the time when lice appears in school settings
Anyone can get lice...mainly from direct head-to-head contact but also from sharing hats, brushes and other personal items. Lice are no cause for shame and no reflection on the hygiene of your home, but are definitely a nuisance!
Please complete lice checks on children with itchy heads, or known exposure to lice, (spending time with friends family or classmates with a known case of lice) and let Jill Webber, School Nurse at Rowe School, know if your child has nits or lice. Together we can keep the cases to a minimum at Rowe.
Tips for Prevention
1. DO NOT SHARE hats, brushes, scarves or personal items.
2. AVOID HEAD to HEAD contact, teach children to hug with heads apart and to be mindful of where their heads are while getting in lockers and reading groups, etc.
3. Keep long hair pulled up tight on head.
4. DO NOT lie on beds, carpets, stuffed animals or pillows that have been in contact with an infested individual
5. Machine wash and dry clothing, bed linens, and other items that an infested person wore or used during the 2 days before treatment using the hot water (130°F) laundry cycle and the high heat drying cycle. Clothing and items that are not washable can be dry-cleaned OR sealed in a plastic bag and stored for 2 weeks.
Performing a head check
1. Find a well lit spot and include entertainment for your child.
2. Use a magnifying glass if you have one.
3. Start at the nape of the neck and and separate hair ¼ inch at a time looking closely at each section for lice and nits.
4. Be sure to examine the whole head, and treat appropriately per CDC guidelines if live lice or active nits are found.
This is an image of nits attached to the hair shaft.
These nits are "cemented" to the shaft and will not move when flicked, like a flake of dry scalp will. You can feel them when you run your fingers over the shaft of hair.
These are lice of varying ages that you might find crawling on the scalp.
Lice are fast moving and can be difficult to remove. A special lice comb can be very helpful in catching and removing them. They should immediately be crushed and discarded.
Websites with helpful information about lice
For more information please reference the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/lice/head/
And for details on treatment, please reference a blog written last year around this time here: https://yarmouthelementaryschoolnurse.blogspot.com/2017/10/lice-lice-lice.html
The BIG Question: Is it Cold or Flu?
When to keep your child home from school
Guideline for Keeping Sick Children Home from School
As a parent, there are times when you may be unsure whether or not to send your child to school. In accordance with the CDC, the AAP and Maine Department of Education, a child should not attend school if he/she exhibits one or more of the following symptoms or infections.
**Fever, 100.4 F or above - A fever is defined as temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher. Students must stay home from school for 24 hours after they no longer have a fever without the use of fever-reducing medicine.
**Conjunctivitis/Pink Eye: Inflammation and/or infection of the conjunctiva/mucous membranes of the eye. Students with suspected conjunctivitis (red eyes with green or yellow drainage) should stay home from school until their health care provider has examined them. Any prescribed medications should be started before returning to school.
**Uncontrolled/excessive sneezing/coughing - Children who have difficulty with managing large amounts of nasal drainage need to be kept home as well. The flu and other viruses are spread through these body fluids being sneezed/coughed into the air and transported from child to child through hand contact.
**Vomiting and/or Diarrhea - Students should stay home from school after being symptom free for 24 hours.
**Strep throat/Impetigo - Students must stay home from school until 24 hours after antibiotics have started.
**Rash: Students with an unexplained rash with fever or behavior change must stay home. Students may return to school if a physician has determined the illness is not contagious and the fever is gone.
Please contact your school nurse with any questions, or if your child has been diagnosed with a contagious illness.
***The above information is by no means complete nor does it substitute for a consultation with your healthcare provider. Please consult your physician/pediatrician for more information.
COLD WEATHER GUIDELINES
Rowe School follows the Child Care Weather Watch guidelines to determine safe temperatures for having the students outside for arrival, recess, and dismissal. Their recommendation states that below 10 degrees, in actual or feels like temp, is unsafe for the kids to play outside. The website with chart and explanations can be found at http://decal.ga.gov/documents/attachments/Weatherwatchchart.pdf
The weather site used to determine actual temperature is Weather Underground. This is the link: https://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=Yarmouth,%20ME
