Allergy Handout Coloring Page
May 26, 2017 by Rachel
When our son entered kindergarten, the school was woefully unprepared to handle a child with life-threatening allergies. There were other allergic students, but their parents hadn’t officially notified the school and hadn’t supplied epinephrine, the life-saving drug that stops anaphylaxis. Some of those students ended up in the emergency room after eating classroom treats that contained nuts or peanuts*.
Our school nurse became our best advocate in the school. One of the first things she encouraged me to do was to draw out this Allergy Handout Coloring Sheet for my son’s classmates. I wanted teachers to be able to modify the sheet if they ever needed so I left extra places before “he” so that they could insert “s” to make the handout for a “she” later. In the top panel “nuts and peanuts” can be easily whited-out so different allergens can be written in.
From kindergarten through second grade, we used this coloring page to give my son’s classmates a simple understanding of how to help keep him safe. If you think this sheet would be helpful to your child or child’s classmate, feel free to modify the information and reproduce it as many times as needed.
And, just as a side note and as a writer for the education market, I want to point out that I intentionally used “quick” instead of the adverb “quickly” in the last panel. I was going for the rhyme.
*Most people think of peanuts as being a kind of nut, but peanuts are actually legumes. Legumes include beans, soybeans, peas and lupin flour, just to name a few. Every person runs the risk of developing a food allergy during their life, sometimes to much rarer foods than peanuts or nuts. For example, two children in the school system had poultry allergies (yes, one of my kids was one of them!).
