I think I must have been born to teach. My grandmother on my father’s side was a teacher. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a teacher. Both my parents were teachers. I started at a young age. By the time I was four years old I was arranging all my teddy bears and dolls into a classroom setting and playing Sunday School. But what I really wanted to be was a musician or a secretary. However, at college, those things didn’t work out and I ended up in the Early Childhood Education Department. That was over forty years ago. I’ve been there ever since.

Many different preschool teaching situations have occupied my time over the years. It all started when my Mother "played school" with me when I was a preschooler. Then I home schooled my own children (and their little cousins and friends) when they were preschoolers. Over the years I have had a small family daycare group, worked with Sunday School and Church classes, and participated in Moms Morning Out programs and small neighborhood play groups. I taught First Grade and Kindergarten for many years in Public and Christian schools. And now I enjoy doing workshops for homeschool moms and daycare providers, and with my husband, Rex, writing and publishing learning materials for preschoolers and their parents and teachers.

In the midst of all these activities I began to realize that preschool skills (counting, colors, shapes, sizes, words & letters, etc) could fit into Bible story themes in a unique blend of spiritual and educational concepts. It was exciting to find out that God has put everything we need for teaching preschoolers right in the Bible stories! And so the idea was born. Learning begins one Bible story at a time. If teachers and parents had activities, handcrafts, and games to play with their children which featured Bible Story Concepts, the children would learn through these hands-on activities, which is the way God made them to learn. Children are learning all of the time, and so teaching is whatever we are doing right now. That's what God says. Read Deut. 6:4-9; 11:18-21.

In my house there are boxes and boxes full of samples and ideas saved over the years. These are all games and activities which were developed for and with children. They worked and they were fun. I like to say they have been child-tested over time.

Each time I begin to write a new curriculum, I can look back to the time when I was in that very same situation. I ask God to be in charge of putting it all together and of doing it through me. I am helpless when it comes to knowing just what each teacher, parent, or child needs from this lesson. But God knows. Many times He brings back memories of things I did long ago, things I had forgotten all about. But they fit the topic I am working on and I go through my boxes for samples of just the right activity to fit the Bible Story. (A fishing game for "Jesus And The Fishermen." A giant tape for measuring old Goliath who was over nine feet tall!). I am always amazed at how God brings it all together.

It is fun reliving these memories. There have been times in the past when I wondered if my life would consist only of teaching young children. I almost felt that I did not even know how to talk to adults anymore. Would I always be known as "just a kindergarten teacher?" Now I can see how all this time the Lord was preparing me for a ministry of reaching preschoolers and their parents and teachers with Bible Story concepts. I can see how He takes the very things He has prepared you to love to do and turns it into your ministry. It has truly been a remarkable journey.

My husband, Rex, and I started Sunny Hollow Press in 1986 as a little home-based ministry when our daughter, Wanda, called. "Help! Help! Mom. I need Bible Story Lessons - fast!" She belonged to MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and had volunteered to take care of the children. So I began sending the lessons, one Bible Story at a time. Other MOPS teachers saw what she was doing and wanted lessons, too. So we put all the stories into books and began sending them out. As MOPS grew, so did Sunny Hollow Press. It has since grown to include Sunday Schools, Church groups, Daycare Centers, Christian Preschools, and Homeschoolers. Our most recent addition has been Target Letter ABC's, which is a complete Kindergarten program written especially for home schooling families and based upon the way I taught kindergarten for many years.

This all keeps us very busy in these, our retirement years. No rocking chairs on the porch for us! We are too busy writing, revising, updating, printing, publishing, designing coordinating toys and games, and trying it all out on our little preschool/kindergarten classes at church. And if you ask, we'll tell you. We love it! 

Sunny Hollow Press has been guided by Paul’s prayer which is found in Col. 1:9-10. We ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will, with all the wisdom and understanding that His Spirit gives. Then you will be able to live as the Lord wants and will produce good fruit that pleases Him. (Paraphrased).