from concept to reality
Our History
Curious questions from her third-grade students sparked Vicki Whiting’s career in publishing. “I’m a curious kid at heart,” she admits.
As a young teacher years ago, Vicki discovered that standard reading materials weren’t helping her struggling readers. So she created reading materials and activities to help her students decode words, play with alliteration, and engage with reading in fun ways.
From boring, generic text to interactive learning!
She turned dry textbook information into learning tools with a game, a word search, fun facts, mazes or a puzzle, and the children began to love reading.
The key moment that led to professional publishing happened when she was teaching the required unit on “Community.” Vicki found the required textbook boring and generic. She asked her students, “How can we learn about our community?” The kids responded: our community newspaper! So, one day after school, she sat down at her kitchen table and created a newspaper-size page of puzzles and games on the theme of “our community.”
Publishing Begins
She took her prototype to the local newspaper, the Sonoma Index-Tribune in California and explained to the editor that a page in the weekly would help them find out about their community. The newspaper editor loved the idea and the “Kid Scoop” page was born.
Each week, Kid Scoop tackles something children hear floating around them but don’t understand – for example this kid’s question: “Why do we get a shot when we aren’t sick?” The topic for that Kid Scoop page: vaccinations.
Her materials for children are informed by educational standards including the Science of Reading, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), and useful knowledge like fact and opinion, history, and geography activities. Her passion for learning all subjects infuses each page of her work.
