On the fifth of July Miss Elinor Qamar, proprietor of the model kindergarten, set out for Europe on a journey of exploration. She will spend most of the summer moving between Germany, England, and Holland, following a program drawn up for her by the ministries of education in those countries, visiting nurseries and kindergartens and the chief factories producing children's toys and equipment, so as to carry back whatever can be carried for
Elinor Qamar with a bouquet of her children in the free-drawing class
her kindergarten and her children in Beirut.
We do not exaggerate when we say that Miss Elinor Qamar stands in the front rank of those who have devoted themselves to children and to kindergartens. She has lived in their company for about a quarter of a century, and the years have only increased her passion for children and her attachment to them... For all her large frame, she possesses a childlike spirit and a kind, innocent heart, which made her, from the very outset of her life, choose her profession and hold fast to it...
She worked in the Iraqi Ministry of Education and founded the kindergartens that are still taken as models; then she worked in Beirut, and her heart's dream was to open a kindergarten of her own and settle down... Three years ago she realized her dream, opening her model kindergarten on the ground floor and in the garden of her own property, in a street branching off the end of Sadat Street — Ras Beirut.
And since Miss Elinor Qamar is forever looking to the latest that the West has achieved in this domain, and every summer would set out for America or Europe to learn, to gain experience, and to buy equipment, her kindergarten has come to keep pace with the finest kindergartens of the West, whether in the educational methods followed, or in the equipment which the little ones handle in abundance, in the garden and inside the classrooms.
Elinor Qamar was created to work with the little ones: with them, she is in her element... and they, with her, are in a happiness beyond all happiness...
Would that every person sought out the work for which he was created, and did not thrust himself into some other work that does not accord with his particular temperament...
And finally we wish "the globetrotter" Elinor a delightful journey, and success in the mission for which she undertakes this trip.
In the garden, where the boys love to climb