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| The MileStar Babies Logo Dog |
I recently spoke with Chelsea Duggan, Director of MileStar Babies. MileStar subscribers receive a lesson in their inbox each day tailored to their child's age and development. Chelsea came up with the idea as an educator frustrated by the lack of an organized resource online that would give families a fun way to share learning experiences with their kids in short daily bursts suitable for the attention span of a newborn-to-three-year-old.
In speaking with Chelsea, I not only learned all about the development of MileStar (a play on the word "milestone" that, as parents, we hear all too often when it comes to our kids' development), but also about how she manages to get her work done efficiently as a working mom. And boy, does she have some great expertise to share in this area.
Read on to learn about how MileStar lessons incorporate cutting-edge research on multiple intelligences, how the British education system might differ from the States' in early childhood (from Chelsea's experience), and how Chelsea uses Timothy Ferris' "4 Hour Workweek" plan to get it all done.
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| Chelsea and her older son |
ES: Hi
Chelsea! Let’s talk a little bit about
MileStar Babies – I’d love to hear about how you decided to start it and what
it’s like being an entrepreneur.
CD: Well,
I’m an educator by background. I had my
first son back in 2008, and as he was getting bigger, I was trying to keep him
interested and keep him developing. The
government kind of outlines all the things your kids should know by the time
they go into school, and I definitely wanted him to go into his first school
experience already knowing his alphabet.
I think they have a huge confidence boost when that
first school experience is a little bit of review, especially if you have a
child who might be a little bit on the shy side and is unsure about being left
somewhere without you. I just wanted him
to feel confident. So we did little
games and activities.
We were in a couple different playgroups, and I
would always ask my mom friends, “what do you do?” There’s always this talk when they’re little
babies about the milestones they reach – are they sitting up, are they
crawling? MileStar Babies is kind of a
play on that – it’s more academic, are they reaching those “MileStars” – are
they able to know their colors and shapes and alphabet? And how can you get them really thinking
about things and about the way the world works?
and about the way the world works?
I realized when I was doing my own research to find
activities that there’s a lot of free activities out there. There’s a lot of information available. The problem is, just like you said yourself,
that you’re busy. It’s hard to find time
to go through a lot of the information that’s out there.
And a lot of what I was finding, especially on some
of the more educator-centric sites, were lesson plans, which from a parent’s
perspective, if you don’t have a teaching background, can be a little confusing
or overwhelming to get through.
MileStar babies is the culmination of that – it’s
about building creative and confident kids, and building learning memories so
that when your kids look back on your childhood, they say to themselves, “Oh
yeah, my mom and I used to do this and it was so much fun.” And it’s a learning memory.
Currently my kids and I are having so much fun with
this one: every night when it’s bathtime, we play “sink or float.” We choose an item each day, and we sort of
vet it to be sure it’s okay, and we throw it in the bath. And we make a hypothesis – will it sink or
will it float? And we have a little
chart on the wall that we keep, and we note, “Hey – these are similar – they
both floated.” Or, “These are different
– one floated and one sank.”
They make their opinion of what they think is going
to happen and they throw it in. Well you
know, that’s scientific inquiry, and it’s so easy to do. It didn’t take me any extra time in my
day. That’s why at MileStar babies,
we’re looking to make it easy. We’re not
looking for burned out babies and “drill and kill” worksheets.
We’re about making those moments where you can
really connect, because I’m sure you’ve had this happen, where all of a sudden
it’s dinnertime and you think, “Where did the day go?” It was just so busy and so crazy, and we have
to be careful that our days don’t all turn into that.
So we say, “Here’s this 15-minute thing you can do
with your kid today to engage them and to have fun, and not have a
pressure-filled situation.” That’s
really where MileStar Babies came about.
On the entrepreneur side of things, I had no idea
what I was doing. So I reached out to
some friends who had started businesses and started conversations, and I
started my research and put together a beta test. And again with my education background, I
understood how curriculum works and I built the curriculum, beta tested it, and
got some good feedback.
And through my connections, I built a good team to
work with and we built the site and put it out there. That’s been scary. It’s been a big risk to say, is this
something people really want? Will they use it?
And even if you have a really positive beta test, you kind of never
know.
Then we officially launched in September 2012, and
it probably took about a year building it prior to that – in terms of building
the curriculum and the site and all that.
So far it’s going really well – we’ve had great feedback, people are
really excited about it, and we’re just pushing forward, taking steps each day.
ES: What is
your primary age target for kids?
CD: Right
now, our system is for 0-3 year olds.
Once you hit that third birthday, you’re sort of cut off. We’re planning to expand up to 6 years old
and we’re hoping to have that launch before the Summer holidays. We don’t have plans to go beyond 6 years of
age for the reason that the curriculum diversifies too much for us to kind of
customize it. So we’re really trying to
reach those pre-school age children.
ES: Do you
literally have a lesson for every day, if someone wanted it, from the day a
child is born up through age 3?
CD: We
do, but the lessons are 5 days/week, so we don’t have lessons for Saturday and
Sunday. The great part about it,
especially with our pricing, is that if you go somewhere like a Gymboree or
somewhere you take your child to for classes, what you pay for a term there
would get you a full year of our service.
And it’s something to do every day.
So I think we’ve really been able to make it cost-effective for parents.
ES: Are the
lessons available to parents on the computer, or their phones, or what?
CD: The
way it works is when you sign up, the lessons are emailed to you each day. And it looks sort of similar to a
newsletter. So you have a one-page
letter saying, “Here’s what you do.”
And, “Here’s what you need to get ready, here’s a good time of day to do
it, and here’s what you do.”
We sort of understand that not every child will
like every lesson, but you also might get a lesson that your kid loves. So we have extensions that say, “Hey, if your
kid loved this activity, here’s a way to take it a step further.” So your 15 minutes may turn into a half hour,
or it may carry over to another day. But
it’s up to the parents to see what your kid enjoys and if they want to take it
further or not. It depends on your
situation.
ES: It
sounds really fun.
CD: I
think when the kids get to that toddler age, it’s so hard to come up with new
things to do all the time. And I’m not
super-crafty – I get a little bit overwhelmed with all the parts and
pieces. So there are different types of
lessons. There are certainly craft lessons
in there, and there’s a lot of singing and dancing and just playing.
If your child really likes cars,
you can substitute cars in.
If they like dolls, use dolls.
The great thing about it is that the lessons are
all built to use what you have at home.
They’re built so that you can use what you already have. If your child really likes cars, you can
substitute cars in. If they like dolls,
you can use dolls. It’s really easy to
use things you have and not have the stress of “I have to pick up this or that,
or I have to glue this here…” It’s easy
ideas.
ES: Do you
diversify, like “Mondays are science”, or how do you schedule the different
types of lessons?
CD: Good
question. The lessons are built on a
multiple intelligence theory structure, and we have to thank Dr. Howard Gardner
for that. Multiple intelligences says
that people learn in different ways.
You might have a very kinesthetic learner, somebody
who learns by being very active. Or you
might have a linguistic learner, someone who learns through speaking about it
and talking about it. Or you might have
a logical learner, somebody who thinks things through mathematically. Or a musical learner, somebody who understands music, songs… There’s a reason why the alphabet song is so
popular – kids really can understand and relate to that.
So really what we’ve tried to do is we’ve taken the
content that we feel kids should know by the time they’re school age and
developmentally ready to do it, and we’ve approached it so that we’re teaching
that content in all of the different multiple intelligences ways.
What that means is that if you were to do our whole
program, you would start to see patterns of how your child learns. I think what’s really awesome about that is
that then when your child is school age, once they start to get into that 8-10
year old stuff, you might start to see that they might start to struggle in a
certain area.
If you know your child is a really musical learner
and they’re struggling with some science content in school, you as the parent
know that you need to present that to them in a musical way. So you might get together and make up a
little song to remember the science information they need to know. And so then, they’re going to have this
confidence because they had success and solved this problem. They learned it in a way that’s familiar to
them.
you as the parent know that you need to
present that to them in a musical way...
Then, they’re going to have this confidence
because they had success and solved this problem.
They learned it in a way that’s familiar to them.
ES: That is
so interesting. I mentioned that my
husband is starting this school, and it is focusing on multiple intelligences,
but it’s interesting to hear specific examples of how it could apply to
different kids.
CD: I
remember in high school, going in to see my math teacher every day and saying,
“I don’t understand.” And every day he
would look at me and say, “I don’t understand why you don’t get this.”
And it was so devastating to me because I felt so
stupid. And it wasn’t my problem; it was
his problem because he could not explain it any other way. He could only explain it one way, and if I
didn’t understand it that way, it was
my problem.
But that isn’t really what education is about. Education is about reaching everyone, and
everyone is different. Everyone has
different ways of learning.
I think another benefit of doing multiple
intelligences with children is this: I don’t know if you’ve been to any of
these parent-child classes, but there’s always that kid who’s racing around…
ES: That’s
my kid! Running in circles.
CD: Those
kids who are super-active need active
activities, but they also need opportunities for those quieter activities. Because the thing is, when they’re school
age, they’re going to be expected to sit and do circle time. And if they’re always racing around, it not
only affects their education but also all the other kids’.
I think what’s great about this is that, hey, it’s
only 15 minutes. So you’re able to
control them and say, “Let’s focus on this and do this short activity
together.”
Dr. Gardner is working at Harvard and there’s some
really great research coming out right now, but it’s talking about how kids
really need those focused periods of time, especially in this 0-3 year age
range. It’s critical because that’s when
their brain architecture is forming. So
it talks about how if they get these great experiences, it helps them reach
their genetic potential.
It’s great to think about, especially compared to
when we grew up and we were kind of in a playpen, ignored for a lot of the
day. It’s exciting to see the research
unfolding.
ES: I guess
for people who grew up thirty or so years ago, when we did, if you excelled in
the conventional academic environment, you know, fine. But for people who kind of fell through the
cracks and didn’t get the attention they needed, maybe it wasn’t recognized
that they could have learned better in a different way. Those kids are the ones who could have really
benefitted from this new research about multiple intelligences.
CD: Also
now, it’s so common for both parents to be working and people are
super-busy. And if you consider the
dad’s working all day, they might only see their kid for 20-30 minutes a
day. So they can say, “We’ve only got
this short time together. Let’s make it
really count.” Let’s do something fun,
let’s do something educational.
their kid for 20-30 minutes a day.
So they can say,
“We’ve only got this short time together.
Let’s make it really count.”
And like I said, we focus on creating those
learning memories where the kid can say, “Remember when daddy and I did this
together,” and it can really make a difference to them as far as what they
remember.
ES: I think
when you do something worthwhile, it stands out in their memories and they may
mention it later, multiple times. And
then talking about it reinforces that learning too.
CD: Sure,
and like I said, it’s really meant to be fun.
For example, you have this toddler at home, and you probably have a
sorting toy with different shapes or colors.
But if your kid’s active, they may be tired of something like that
quickly.
A game we do a lot with my youngest is we put a
piece of colored paper on the floor, and we go on a treasure hunt. We try to find as many things that are red as
we can and put them on the piece of paper.
So it’s active, he’s having fun, and it’s reinforcing his color
understanding. He’s active and running
around but he’s also learning to sort and be critical.
ES: How did
you go about developing this volume of lessons for the kids? It sounds like such an overwhelming number.
CD: You
know, a lot of them were things I was doing with my first son every day. I went through education research, what
should they know, what should they be able to do. And I just figured that kind of thing out and
made sure it kind of went into the timeline of their age chronologically. Again, there are a lot of great resources on
the internet – there are lots of things online you can find to do, so some of
it was going through that information and changing it to fit our needs so that
you didn’t have to have specific things or toys to do it.
It’s not necessarily rocket science, all the
lessons. There’s baking lessons – here’s
how to do some measuring and cooking together and here’s an easy way to do
it. I won’t say that’s necessarily the
pinnacle of our lessons, but it was taking activities like that and making them
our own. And then really taking steps to
make it creative and fun.
I have a music background as well, so there are a
lot of original songs we put in there, and again, it was stuff we were doing
with our kids when they were little. I
don’t know if you ever have this problem, but I was shocked when I saw on
Facebook how many friends were posting that they took their kids to the dentist
and they had to have their teeth pulled because they weren’t brushing their
teeth, and the parent has really struggled to get them to brush their teeth.
We have a song that we’ve always sung when our kids
brush their teeth.
ES: We don’t
always sing the same song, but we also discovered that if we sing a song while
we brush, he’s totally distracted.
CD: There
are things in there like that, that take advantage of the time you’re already
spending together.
But otherwise, I did build all the lessons and it’s
pretty cool because when you receive a lesson, as a parent, you can click at
the bottom on whether you liked it or didn’t like it. So we constantly go in and change lessons and
update them and make sure that our content is the best that it can be. And that’s certainly something as an
entrepreneur that can be tricky. I have
an end vision in mind, and this was what I could get out there to just begin
and to try it. But I’m constantly
working to build and to upgrade and make the lessons the best you could have.
There’s sort of this curtain with education, where
you go in and have your parent-teacher conference and the teacher tells you how
your kid is doing, but the truth of the matter is, you know your kid better
than any teacher ever will. And I think
you have to invest the time and know where to go, because there’s nothing worse
than getting to the point where your kid has a problem. I think you have to be proactive and instill
that sense of confidence in your kid, because if they’re confident, then school
is so much easier than when they’re feeling unsure.
ES: You
mentioned some government guidelines about what kids should know before
starting school. I didn’t know about
that. What are some of them?
CD: Sure
– basically Washington puts out a set of core standards, and they have all
their doctoral educators put that together.
And then that gets diversified to each state. If you google “Illinois State Learning
Standards”, it will come up and you can go through each subject area.
So, generally, English Writing and Mathematical are
sort of what they consider the core standards, and then they’ll have fine arts
and Science and Social Studies, and sometimes they’re getting into secondary
languages. And basically that outlines
everything your kid should know and understand: what should your kid know and
understand by a certain point. For
example, by Kindergarten.
That list talks about what they should know by the end of Kindergarten. That list also talks about “early standards”,
what your child should know before starting Kindergarten. But all kids are very different. That’s why I like working with this multiple
intelligences theory. Because your kid
may crawl at 6 months old. It may take
mine until 8 months.
The truth of the matter is whether or not they get
the actual content isn’t as important as the experience. I think eventually they do get the content,
and that’s why we work in this structure, because the content shows up again
and again in different and new ways for them to try it out.
So that’s where you can find all the learning
standards. I will say, surprisingly, I
was living in London up until the end of August of this year. And I used an international standard of
learning, not just the United States state standards. So I went through all of the US State
standards for early childhood, but I also went through the European standard to
be sure that we were on par with where you would be worldwide. Because we do have a site in the UK as well.
It’s been great because you’re not only learning to
just do what’s required here, but eventually you want to be competitive in a
worldwide market. Although I don’t
necessarily believe that if you don’t do this, your six year old will not be
able to get a job in Europe eventually.
But I think it’s more or less just making sure that you’re on the same
page in terms of what everyone’s trying to reach.
ES: Did you
find differences in terms of what European kids would be required to know
before school and what Americans would be?
CD: The
difference is interesting, and I found it less in the research, but more with
my son’s experience. He started at age
three, and he went three hours a day, five days a week in a very traditional
British school. Now that we’ve moved
back to the US, and due to his birthday he’s essentially the baby in his class
here but we wanted him in that class because it would be a continuation of
where he was over there. In his current
school here in the US, he’s doing all of the information he did last year in
the British school, but a year later. So
they definitely push the academics earlier there.
I’ve noticed that here, people are much more into
part-time, they don’t want kids to go every day, whereas they go five days a
week right from the start and that’s pretty typical. I found it to be more academic than it is
here. I can’t speak for everyone.
Also, my school is still too young for the public
schools here, and he was also not in a public school in England, so it’s
somewhat subjective due to the schools we’ve enrolled him in.
I think that also, once you get to that three- to
six-year old age, they push writing much sooner than we do here.
And the school my son was at was very very focused
on puzzles, that the kids were able to do puzzles. Part of that, especially in London, is that
the schools have very strict and difficult entry requirements. The kids that were good at puzzles were good
at critical thinking.
And basically, their point was that it
transfers. If your child understands how
to build one type of puzzle, they’re much more likely to understand how to
build another type of puzzle. So it
would help for those entrance exams.
When you’ve got these toddlers running around,
you’ve got so many toys and so much going on that it’s hard to remember
sometimes to pull out the puzzles or a certain toy and look at it in a new way.
That’s why I’m going to say, a lot of our lessons
are not necessarily the pinnacle lesson, but they may use things you already
have, and you can think about them in a new way.
ES: We
definitely have a lot of puzzles, and it’s always been fascinating and even a
little mind-boggling to me the number of ways there are to do them wrong. As an adult, I couldn’t even come up with
half the ways he does to put a piece in the wrong direction, wrong spot
altogether, wrong side, or whatever. Our
brains process these simple puzzles so quickly that we can’t even consciously
process what’s going on.
Especially
with the shape sorters. You see the
circle, or cylinder, and you automatically know where it would go. But when you see a kid go at it, you realize,
“I had to learn this thing” sometime and there were lots of elements that came
together to help me figure out what goes where.
Or with a
flat puzzle, I’ve tried again and again to convey the concept of a straight
side going on the edge, or a piece with two straight sides being a corner, but
that definitely has not sunken in.
It’s amazing
how much there is to learn about everything, and a puzzle is just one small
example.
CD: With
this brain research that’s coming out of Harvard, it’s astounding what they’re
seeing in these 0-3 year olds and how their brains are developing and building,
and how much they take in.
That’s again why our lessons are really good,
because we’re reminding parents how to play.
You sit down and because you’re thinking of something with such an
advanced and developed mind, you just can’t remember what it’s like to sort of
think of something with no boundaries.
ES: That’s
the beauty of the way that they think, but also what makes it so
infuriating. You can see the way the
puzzle goes together, and obviously it’s not a challenge for an adult, so you
want to jump in there but you know it’s better to let them figure it out on
their own.
You forget
how much information they’re processing, and I guess that’s a big part of what
makes being a parent so fun – getting to relive that to some extent.
So to shift
gears a little bit, to your experience as a business person, what is your day
like? What do you spend your time doing
now that a lot of your lesson plans have been developed?
CD: I’m
a big believer in “The 4-Hour Work Week”, if you’ve ever heard of that book by
Timothy Ferris. And no, I don’t stick to
it 100%, but there were certain things in my life that I had to automate that
made my life so much easier. For
example, laundry is tricky. It’s easy, so
you feel like you accomplished something in the day if it gets done. But you didn’t actually accomplish anything –
at least I don’t necessarily see it that way.
But now I only do laundry one day a week. And if it doesn’t all get done, it has to
wait for the next week.
I don’t know about you, but we have way too many
clothes anyway. So we just do it once a
week. And that kind of automation has
really helped me become successful as a businessperson.
I will say that each of my days is a little bit
different. We have our morning, we make
breakfast. We’ve recently been doing a
little bit of yoga in the morning, which has been fun with our two boys. And then we’ve got our school run. And I’ve got the younger one with me and a
couple mornings a week, we go do
a little activity, and then he goes for his nap which is around two hours.
I’ve really worked hard to sort of get the email
and the Facebook and the Twitter out of my life in the sense that I really work
to try to check it only twice a day. The
4-Hour Workweek sets it up as, “Check it at 12 and 4.”
So, once my son is down for his nap, I have this
two hour block, and I try to focus on working for those two hours, and not
checking Facebook or whatever, but getting kind of core content work done.
On Sunday nights, I’ve got my little planner for
the week, and I choose one critical task and maybe one sort of secondary
critical task so that I’ve got two for each day of the week. So then I know, this is what I’ve got to
accomplish on these days of the week.
For example, yesterday, I had a content revision,
so I had a group of lessons I knew I needed to revise and I knew I had to get
through them in that two hour time period.
Or I might have a day where I say, “Okay, I’m blogging for the
MarketMommy. I’ve got to get the blog
done, and I’ve got two hours.” So I’ve
got to get that done and edit and email it.
I’ll give myself later in the day a 20 minute time
to respond to emails and things, but I try to automate that as much as
possible.
Because once my son is up, I’ve got to make lunch,
and then go pick up the other one, and then we have our afternoon together and
at that point, the kids are testing a lot of the lessons. I try to have something for each day as we’re
trialing and building out that 3-6 content.
So my son, who’s now 4, is testing a lot of that content and we see how
it goes.
Then before you know it, we have dinner and bedtime
and I do believe in putting them to bed early, and once they’re in bed at
night, if I needed more time on email or whatever, there’s time for that. Otherwise I go back to my tasks and whatever
I didn’t accomplish.
I definitely find that by saying, “I’ve got to get
these two things done today,” 99% of the time I’m successful at getting those
two things done. Which is awesome,
because then you can move on to the next thing.
If you can focus on exactly what it is you need to get done, it’s really
helpful.
ES: This is
so instructive and inspirational! It
makes it sound so doable.
CD: Yeah,
thanks. It is. But I think your original question was
actually about what I’m working on now.
We’re always working on content revision. We’re working on building out that 3-6 year
old curriculum, which we’re planning to launch in the summer. We are going to our first trade show at the
end of February and we’re planning to launch our first book alongside with that
trade show.
So right now, you’ve probably seen our little logo
dog. He’s a character in our book. We’re having three additional characters
designed, and those should be finished by the end of this week. Then they will go towards illustrating the
book that’s been written. Fingers
crossed, I can have it all pulled together to sell as sort of our trial into
that market at this trade show at the end of February. So that’s kind of what we’re working on. It sounds simple but it’s actually a lot of
work!
ES: I don’t
think it sounds simple! It sounds like a
ton of work!
CD: Especially
the building curriculum. And I’m also a
member of the Chicago Womens Entrepreneur network, and we’re working on getting
a panel of women together to do some talks throughout the area, so I have some
of those things. I also have a couple of
speaking engagements at this trade show, so I’ve been working on those. It’s all part of the juggle.
ES: Gosh,
you really sound productive. It’s really
putting me to shame. If I get a list
written on a piece of paper and a load of laundry folded, I feel good.
CD: You
know, I think it’s actually harder when you only have one child. Once you have two, you’ve just got to get it
done. I need to be fiercely organized. I actually write two to-do lists, my business
list and my home list.
Because there are always notes coming home from
school: they need a shoebox, they need to bring in a Ziploc bag, they need
sugar cubes. There’s always something to
bring in. I really try hard to deal with
things as soon as they come in. If he
brings home a permission slip or a book order from school, I turn around and do
it right away. I keep that family to-do
list separate from my work to-do list.
For me, it’s always, “can I get my two things done
today?” For some people, it might be one
thing. But I think the hardest thing is,
if you don’t know what you need to do that day, then you go to that list and
you don’t know where to start.
ES: I know,
then you’re sort of flailing and nothing gets done. I also find that making the tasks on the list
extremely specific, so you get that sense of accomplishment with each one and
you also don’t lose track of where you are in your task, is really
helpful.
Because if a
task is too vague, it may involve multiple steps, and it’s not clear a few days
later what step you’re on. You may have
left a message for someone and hit a wall waiting for their call back, so you
can’t check off the task but you feel lame because it looks like you haven’t
done anything if nothing’s checked off.
Then a few days later, you’re like, “wait, what else did I need to do
about that?”
It’s all
about “divide and conquer” for me.
CD: And
I’ve definitely found that as I’ve gotten more specific about what needs to get
done, I’ve gotten a better feel for what I can really get done in the time I
have.
ES: Right –
because if you know you’re giving yourself two tasks to do, you need to be
smart about setting yourself up for success and not failure.
Also, what
you were saying about having one kid versus two or more reminded me of the old
adage, “If you want something to get done, give it to a busy person.” When we’re under pressure, we figure out a
way to make things happen. Most of us
tend to procrastinate when we have too much time. I know I do.
Sometimes setting
what seems like an absurdly simple goal, like, “I’m going to do one thing today
for my business, or I’m going to make one phone call today for my business” is
enough to get moving. It makes the whole
thing less overwhelming.
It’s like
saying, “Today I’m going to work out for ten minutes.” Of course once you get started, you’re going
to do more, but you need to set that low hurdle to fool yourself into getting
started.
You don’t have to always
fix the whole thing or solve the whole thing,
or have that final vision perfected.
It’s taking one step to move
the whole thing forward.
CD: Exactly,
it’s taking that one step. You don’t
have to always fix the whole thing or solve the whole thing, or have that final
vision perfected. It’s taking one step
to move the whole thing forward. And
that may be reaching out to one person and the information you get there can
take you to the next step.
ES: Chelsea,
thanks again so much for speaking with us.
I love the direction this has gone and I can’t wait to enroll in
MileStar Babies for my own family.
CD: Thanks
again Erica, and take care.
