Preventing Choking Hazards in the Classroom
By: Angela Dalessio, EC-SEAT Scholar and Graduate Student in Early Childhood Special Education Currently I am in a preschool classroom, and a situation has arisen that has caused the team to take a deeper look into what items can be seen as a choking hazard in our room. We have a student who has multiple special needs, and has started to mouth different objects. Some examples are play dough, and more recently a unifix cube. The student managed to lodge the unifix cube at the back of his throat, which led to the Para professional to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him. Due to this incident, our classroom has had to purchase a, "no choke tube," in order to measure different objects in our environment for safety precautions. The tube is 2.25 inches long by 1.25 inches wide, which is approximately the size of a fully expanded throat of a child under three years old. Many tips and facts can be found online about preventing choking. ...