It was five years ago this month that www.child-1st.com launched! Just like a new grandma fondly reminiscing about her own child’s baby days, I have been recalling our early years and what life was like at Child1st. For one thing, I was newly retired from the classroom and was scared out of my mind about what I was doing - just up and quitting a secure paycheck to start a company all by myself. In those days, I was the owner, the designer, the writer, the tech person, the accounting department, the order fulfillment department, the website designer, the phone answerer and email responder… and the do-er of anything else that needed doing whether or not I felt prepared and adequate for the job! What WAS I thinking? Oh, I remember. While I was teaching, my heart broke on a daily basis for children in schools who were not able to learn in ways that best suited their brains because the materials available to their teachers and parents were all designed for left brained learners. That daily heartbreak was precisely what spurred me to make this leap into the unknown.
Growth in Our Physical Plant
In those days, we lived in Florida, and business took place in a tiny office into which we’d squeezed two desks: one for me and one for Bob for when he was not working his real job. It makes me laugh now to recall that we had to take turns standing up because if we both stood up at the same time, our chairs would crash into each other. By the time we leased our first big printer, it filled up the last 6 square feet in that office. We used the living and dining room for production and order filling.
Our next office was twice as large; it seemed so spacious!
I loved the windows from which I spotted baby owls perched in the pines, woodpeckers in many of the trees and once even a rare Florida panther loping into the woods! The additional space helped tremendously, but before long, we were completely out of room and the need for additional personnel had become unavoidable.
Growth in Personnel
We survived the years of acquiring machinery and equipment – doing everything in-house. During the height of the recession, we hired our first employees and things started really looking up! There is nothing like more sets of hands, eyes and brain cells! Giftedness in differing areas can never be overrated either!
During this past year, we’ve moved to having our editions printed commercially so that the quality of our products and the efficiency of the business could be enhanced. The newest lesson I have joyfully learned about running a business is that including experts in many differing fields into our team makes for a stronger product and a stronger company. I LOVE IT that we’ve grown from my doing everything whether or not I was very good at it, to having people who are experts taking areas of responsibility so that all of us do better.
Growth of the Product Line
Back in the early days, all we had was an early version of the SnapWords™ cards. Over time we added other SnapWords™ products, alphabet products, and books. Now, we have quite a selection of products for reading and math! In fact, today we are finalizing the new edition of the Sight Word Strip Book. The new edition will be called Sight Words in Sentences. The old edition worked, but the new one will be cute to boot! Best of all, the quality will sky rocket, but the price will drop! Don’t you just love it?
Old edition New edition
Other new editions include:
The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns
Writing the Visual, Kinesthetic, and Auditory Alphabet
Stay tuned!
Just as a heads up, I wanted to let you know that we have math products and more Easy-for-Me™ materials in the works. The best way to make sure you hear about new products as they are released is to join our mailing list. We're too busy to send emails too often, so don’t worry about your inbox getting flooded! We also post information about Child1st, sales and new products on Facebook, so be sure to like the Child1st page there to keep up to date on what’s new!
