I’m writing to you today to address some questions that have come up recently regarding this horrible sick season we are having. As you know, I have asked everyone to not attend class if you or your child is sick. A good guideline to follow is to be fever free for 24 hours, and for a nose not to be running with anything other than clear. It is VERY common for babies and toddlers to have runny noses due to teething. It is VERY hard to distinguish that from being sick. If you at all feel that your baby is under the weather, remain home and schedule a makeup class.

I wanted to let you all know our procedures for attempting to keep our classrooms as sanitized as possible. While it is impossible to guarantee you that our instruments and props are 100% sanitized, we are trying to do our best to minimize sickness. We spray instruments, etc. with Clorox Anywhere, and tumble dry all fabric items in the dryer. After doing much research, Clorox Anywhere seems to be the safest product to use for our purposes. Here is a link to read more about the product:  http://www.clorox.com/products/overview.php?prod_id=ahsds.

For alcohol-based hand sanitizers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends an alcohol concentration of 60 to 95%  of ethanol or isopropanol for the great efficacy in killing germs.  In the study listed above, it was found that some hand sanitizer products purchased from local retail deep-discount stores, advertising the same claims as those found on name-brand products such as Purell, had, in reality, only a 40% ethyl alcohol concentration – much too low to reduce bacterial counts on hands.  In fact, the faulty product seemed to “mobilize the bacteria, spreading them around the hand instead of killing them.” (N.Y.Times: Hand Sanitizers: Good or Bad?  , by Deborah Franklin,  March 21, 2006)