Great Faces Learning

08/12/2021

We're thrilled to announce a brand new placemat in our collection: Great People of the Pacific Northwest!

We have an astronaut, women's suffragists, the governor who saved Oregon's beaches, the first woman to climb Mount Rainier, the region's only US Supreme Court Justice, the Spokane woman who created Father's Day, and many other remarkable folks.

From Lewis & Clark and Chief Seattle to Edward R. Murrow and Ken Griffey Jr., we introduce the children in your life to men and women who are deeply part of our shared life together in the great Pacific Northwest.

Learn more and order here:

An educational placemat of showing Chief Seattle, Lewis & Clark, Edward R. Murrow, Abigail Scott Duniway, William O. Douglas, Billy Frank Jr., Chief Joseph, Fay, Fuller Tom McCall and other historical people from around Washington, Oregon, Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. This laminated placemat

05/21/2021

Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross on this day 140 years ago, in 1881.

Clara was just 10 years old when she got her start in nursing after her brother fell from a roof and needed years of care. She eventually founded a popular school, where she was much in demand as a teacher. She once said, "I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay."

She eventually became one of the first women to work for the U.S. government. During the Civil War she gathered supplies and tended to troops. Once a bullet almost killed her, piercing her sleeve as she treated a wounded soldier. She became known as “The Angel of the Battlefield.”

In Europe she learned of Jean Dunant, and in America she founded the U.S. branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The first meeting was held in her home. She even sailed to Constantinople to set up a Red Cross branch in Turkey.

She said, "Everybody's business is nobody's business, and nobody's business is my business."

Help the children in your life celebrate great people in history like Clara Barton through our educational placemats.

Clara is featured in our "Doctors and Healers" placemat: https://greatfaceslearning.com/placemats/p/doctors-and-healers

and our Great Americans placemat:
https://greatfaceslearning.com/placemats/p/spring-bowl-mkn59

02/02/2021

For Black History Month, it's an honor to tell the story of America’s first black physician, Dr. James McCune Smith. He wasn’t allowed to attend university in America, so he went to medical school in Scotland and graduated at the top of his class.

Dr. Smith returned to America and became a major voice in the Abolition movement. He also became the first black person to run a pharmacy in America. His New York pharmacy building was a major stop on the Underground Railroad, a place for escaping slaves to hide on their way to freedom.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass called Dr. Smith “the single most important influence on my life.”

Dr. Smith's struggles pushed him to serve others.

“I have striven to obtain education," Dr. Smith said, "at every sacrifice and every hazard, and to apply such education to the good of our common country.”

Dr. James McCune Smith is one of the great men and women on our "Doctors, Healers & Comforters" educational placemat -- a good way to introduce the young people in your lives to the luminaries of our shared history. Find it at https://greatfaceslearning.com/placemats/p/doctors-and-healers

01/30/2021

Did you know that America’s first female doctor was born exactly two centuries ago? Happy 200th birthday to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell! Born Feb. 3, 1821 in Bristol, England, Elizabeth Blackwell came to America at age 11, where she grew up desperately poor. Blackwell decided to pursue the career of a doctor after a dying friend lamented that she could have been spared the worst of her suffering if only she could have had a female physician.

Blackwell applied to several different medical colleges but none would except women. The rejections steeled her resolve. “I would rather die than give it up,” she told a friend. Finally she tried Geneva Medical College in New York. The dean put the question of accepting Elizabeth to a vote. If only one of the all-male student body said no, she would not be received. The students believed that the dean was making a joke, and Blackwell was accepted unanimously.

Her fellow medical students smirked and mocked, while the townspeople of Geneva regarded her as wicked or insane. Nevertheless, she persisted, gradually earning their respect and graduating first in her class. For her doctoral thesis she studied typhus fever, one of the era’s worst diseases for the poor. In 1847 she became the first woman to earn a medical diploma from a traditional medical school. She quickly recruited her sister, Emily, who in 1854 became only the third licensed female doctor in America.

The sisters traveled to Europe to continue their training, but Elizabeth suffered a serious eye infection while practicing in Paris, and permanently lost her sight in her left eye.

Back in America, Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell decided to create their own hospital. They opened a place where the poor could receive care in the Lower East Side of New York, then founded a hospital where other new female doctors could get the experience they needed, but no one else would provide. Their New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children opened in 1857 and their women’s medical college opened 11 years later.

Elizabeth wrote frequently and traveled widely. A visionary, she said, “a hundred years hence, women will not be what they are now.” She helped establish the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874. She stayed to teach gynecology there for decades.

By the time the Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell died in 1910, women doctors made up 6% of the nation’s physicians. Today, more than half of all medical students are women.

Learn more: Elizabeth wrote her life story in 1895: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/blackwell/pioneer/pioneer.html

Do you want the children in your life to know about remarkable people like Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell? She is just one of the history-making people featured on educational placemats from Great Faces Learning. From Clara Barton to Abraham Lincoln, from Rosa Parks to Chief Joseph, we bring together the luminaries of our world to help guide our children into a better future. Learn more at www.greatfaceslearning.com.

01/04/2021

Have you met a Holland Lop? They are lively rabbits, friendly and sweet. Because of this nature, they are great for first-time rabbit owners. True to their name, their ears are lopped.

Learn more about many kinds of domesticated rabbits with our educational placemat, available here: https://greatfaceslearning.com/placemats/p/rabbit-placement