OUR MISSION To provide busy, caring adults with a means to encourage learning and enrich relationships with their children. Through this site, we aspire to: * Promote and foster interactive learning experiences * Enhance and strengthen family connections * Build core values that are essential for success in life We intend to accomplish our mission by delivering quality ideas and activities to help families plan their time together and links to appropriate resources. OUR HISTORY Our roots go all the way back to 1979 when the concept of "parenting" had not yet entered our vocabularies. Lisa Durkin, a former teacher and veteran of the educational publishing industry, created First Teacher Magazine to meet early educators' need for information and ideas. Over the next twenty years, First Teacher formed a well respected team of contributing experts from all areas of early education including teachers, parents, professors and artists. In addition to the magazine, this team also produced 19 books,learning systems for educational publishers, and Everyday TLC, a weekly newsletter developed for the huge family child care market. During 1998-99, we evaluated various opportunities for using the Internet to distribute our twenty+ years of classroom and family-tested content and resources. The result of this process is FamilyTLC.net, designed specifically for busy, caring adults with children in their lives. We welcome you to our community of users and look forward to helping you bring fun, learning experiences to your family everyday! THE TEAM Our editorial team is managed by Belinda Kustan, who has nine years experience teaching children two to twelve years and seven years experience in administration and education at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA. Editors and advisors include: * Rachael Brown has over 20 years experience in early childhood education, working in the public and private sector with emphasis in providing training and consultation to child care providers and parents. * Tania Cowling, columnist and author on parenting and early education topics, was a preschool and Kindergarten teacher and is developer of Mommy and Me programs. * Susan Entz has 20 years of classroom teaching experience with an emphasis on children with special needs, She is a past President of the Hawaii Association for the Education of Young Children, Big Island Chapter. * Leanne Grace has been Director/teacher of private preschool and childcare center for 15 years, trainer of early childhood professionals, and presenter at major early childhood conferences including NAEYC . * Mary Beth Spann Minucci was a teacher for 14 years and is a contributing editor to First Teacher and Instructor magazines, and author of more than 20 teacher resource books. * Kenneth R. Brown, Ph.D. is on the faculty at the University of Michigan. He works with school districts across the country in curriculum development and is Founder of Virtual Teacher Academy.com. * Susan Ginsberg, Ed.D is editor and publisher of Work & Family Life: Balancing Job and Personal Responsibilities. * Fretta Reitzes is Director 92nd Street Y's Lillian and Sol Goldman Family Center for Youth and Family in New York City, co-author of WonderPlay. Web development/design team: * Bob Ness has over 20 years experience in software development specializing in complex information systems. * Mark Wise is the Chief Creative Officer of Imagewise Interactive. He has over eight years experience in web site and user interface design. His past lives include Media Services Director at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and 20 years experience in commercial photography, video and multimedia production. * Steve Holzinger is a senior developer of web and distributed client/server database applications specializing in electronic media. Steve has over 15 years experience in applied technology. The art in the activities was done by Deborah Dixler and fellow artists, Nina Woldin and Catherine Minor at Dixler Studio. Debby has extensive experience as an artist, designer, and educator in the fields of early childhood, museum, and art education. She has been art director on all First Teacher projects for the past 20 years and also taught in the New Perspectives Program at the Bank Street College of Education. PARTNERS Funding for the web site has been provided by FirstTeacherTLC.com and Philip Morris U. S. A. Youth Smoking Prevention.