People don't usually interpret egg free as being nothing containing eggs. My sons preschool is egg,nut and seed free and they don't ban baking. I don't know why now I think about it.
The counting on fingers thing seems to be standard. The are taught it when the start formal learning. My son took 6 months to get back to where he was before he started. I have read similar complaints in other forums (and this one I think).
here' it's a policy if the child has a severe allergy (like eggs in my son's case) nothing that enters the class can contain eggs. The kids can bring fruits or veggies and packaged snacks that are labeled and clearly contain no eggs and no home made or home baked snacks and food is allowed. There was an official letter that went out to the parents in class explaining the whole egg-free thing but my guess is some of the parents don't speak English too well and the teacher and her assistant are supposed to check everything. (not that hard with 10 kids and two adults in the class!) ... so basically my son had full access to snacks with eggs in his backpack the whole 20 or 30 minute bus ride home from school with no epi-pen on board of the bus. ... pretty serious oversight given all the promises about safety and how things like this can "never" happen that the school gave us back in the fall.
I don't think his teacher is taking all the allergy problems as seriously as she should. Couple weeks ago we found out he's also allergic to cold ... NOT good living in northern Illinois! He started breaking out in hives and getting all puffy right after Christmas and took us about 2 weeks figuring out what was going on (exposure to deep freeze getting on and off the bus, etc.) ... so I emailed the teacher explaining what's causing it and how to avoid it (and that we have to make sure he's not exposed to cold because his body is reacting to sudden changes of his body temperature) ... and the next thing I know, she's still letting him play for 20 minutes with a sensory table full of ICE!!! ... I asked in my email if they could get him on the bus first (it's just a small bus for these 10 kids and they load them up two kids at a time to buckle them in) so he would have minimum exposure to the cold air (at that point we were having -20F windchills) and that never happened either (so he'd get home once again breaking out in hives right away). So, my point is ... if this teacher (while being very nice and pleasant) can't keep up with something as basic as health and safety precautions, I don't think I can expect her to pick up on our son's abilities, not to mention offer any type of differentiation
