How Circletime Kids Started

When artist, designer and mother-of-two Rachel Addison went online to find lyrics to the Latvian songs she grew up hearing from her immigrant mother, she was sorely disappointed by the lack of cultural resources online - so she took things into her own hands, and Circletime Kids was born!

After her initial "moment of inspiration," Rachel spent over a year carefully studying the early childhood resource market at large and poring over immigration and bilingual education statistics, and after conducting interviews with scores of parents, teachers and librarians she concluded that her concept was a resource that could potentially be used and appreciated by millions. "I feel that in doing this I am honoring my mother and my heritage, and that in itself is reason enough for me to dedicate the time, money and resources necessary to build this library," Rachel has said.

As a self-employed work at home parent with no start up money to pay for outside help, the key to the birth of Circletime Kids was Rachel's ability to produce virtually every aspect of the resource library herself - audio recording, video production, photography, illustration, researching and writing recipes and crafts, developing the website and database systems and more. With know-how and hundreds of late night hours while the kids were alseep, Rachel worked to begin assembling what would become Circletime Kids.