I started this literacy blog several years ago, when I realized that many of the posts on my home blog were turning toward education.  The followers on my home blog were mainly from the home decor, DIY, cooking, and gardening crowd.  With so many posts relating to reading and writing in the home, as well as the way we integrate literacy into the lives of our young children, I decided that a new blog needed to be born.

I came up with the name Love, Laughter, and Literacy because I really want families to know that literacy is more than workbook pages and the obligatory reading for 20 minutes every single day of your life.  Literacy is about integrating writing into your daily life, getting inspired by a book and using that as a spring board for a day in the kitchen with your children, or taking a trip to a local farm and creating a scrapbook page about your adventure.  You’ll notice that the pictures in the header of this blog don’t even show a book or a writing utensil.  I did that on purpose… our literacy lives are the sums of our experiences.  We write about what we know and read what we love.  Am I right?

My kids were much younger when I started this blog.  Our day to day experiences involved creating garden boxes, researching best vegetables for our region, drawing up garden plans, and reading fiction books about gardening.  My son is 14 now, and guess what… drawing up garden plans and creating scrapbook pages about our garden adventures have taken a back seat to basketball tournaments and hanging out with girls.  My kids have grown up and although my work as a parent is not done, my work as an early childhood literacy teacher is winding down in my homelife.  Of course, I’m still a kindergarten teacher, but writing about literacy in the home should also come from real life experience… not just what I think should be done.

That brings me to my big announcement!  I’ve decided to make this blog into a partnership.  I couldn’t be more excited.  My mission has always been to inspire families to incorporate literacy in their everyday lives and I truly believe my partners have this same desire. Are you wondering who my partners will be?  Well, you’ll have to wait a few more days.  While we are gathering ideas, writing bios, and taking pretty pictures, you can start getting excited about new faces, fresh voices, and fabulous activities that will be coming your way.  My partners all have strong backgrounds in education, but they also have something that I can’t offer anymore.  They have little people running up and down their hallways, fingerprints on the fridge, and they offer a perspective of literacy to  parents with young children.  This blog was always meant to be about early childhood literacy, and while I can still bring my work from the classroom into this space, it will be wonderful to welcome people who are living in the moment of early childhood literacy.

I can’t wait for you to meet my friends!  I’m hoping to have a blog post ready for their Love, Laughter, and Literacy debut on Friday!

Until then, happy reading and writing!