white house

When President Obama announced the White House's 2014 budget earlier this week, it included an increased commitment to prioritizing early childhood eduction through a new Preschool For All initiative. The program strives to give every child in the US — particularly those in low and moderate income brackets — access to a high-quality pre-K experience. We had the privilege of learning more about the program through a conversation with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who believes passionately in the government taking a "cradle to career" approach to educating and empowering our youth. Here, the ins and outs of how the initiative could affect your family and your kids' future:

What Preschool For All Entails
One of the president's key themes in his new budget proposal is a focus on the "cradle to career" continuum. "The only way to build, support, and grow a thriving middle class is by providing access to world-class education," said Duncan. This translates to state-level partnerships to provide all low- and moderate-income 4-year-olds with access to high-quality early childhood education.

The initiative is supplemented by investments in home-visiting programs for those families in need, including access to social workers and home health-care aides as needed to improve a child's health, development, and ability to learn.

Click here to learn more about Preschool For All's funding, who it affects, and more.

If the idea of building a basic gingerbread house sounds daunting to you, try building a 300-pound gingerbread replica of the White House. That's exactly what presidential pastry chef Bill Yosses has been busy doing for the past several weeks, as we discovered when we had a chance to tour holiday decorations at the White House.

The 300-pound replica of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — which features reindeer on the roof, an edible vegetable garden, and Bo Obama playing outside the front lawn — was one of the highlights of our tour of the White House and its holiday festivities. Although a similar house is re-created annually, each house varies from year to year, so we spoke to Chef Yosses about how the creative process works, and why this house was different.

YumSugar: When do you begin designing and creating the White House gingerbread house?
Bill Yosses: Mrs. Obama meets with her staff in July and they begin to talk about different proposals, what they would like to have as a theme, and how they would like to see the decorations. At that time, we sent a note up, and asked if we could do something different this year; I proposed this bread that looks like stone. She said, "Yes, let's try it, let's see what happens." We're all happy with how it came out.

YS: So you do a house every Christmas?
BY: We do a house every Christmas. We do different aspects [of the White House]: the north side, the south side. This tradition has been here since 1969 and other houses have been used, but we've kind of settled on the White House and different versions of it. We're celebrating the craftsmanship of those who built the house itself because the stone was quarried not far from here.

Learn more about the miniature White House — including how long it takes to come together! — when you read more.