Dec. 3, 2008
Looking for a holiday present for your child that will help him or her learn and think as well as giggle with glee? Kate Miller, an ex-academic and mother of two young sons, would like you to shop at Charlie's Playhouse. Charlie—as in famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.
Charlie's Playhouse is a brand new company started by Miller less than two months ago. She, her two boys, four-year-old Caleb, and eight-year-old Isaac, create and test games and toys that teach kids about evolution, natural selection and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.
"My kids are my co-CEO's," Miller told the Humanist Network News. "They participate in ideas and playing with the toys." Miller said, with only a hint of humor in her voice, that the children are also her product testers and spokesmodels. Caleb and Isaac are pictured on the company web site interacting with the toys.
Caleb and Isaac look at the giant evolution timeline.
Photo courtesy of Kate Miller.
Miller's flagship product is a giant time-line play mat printed on synthetic paper. Caleb, three years old at the time the product was being developed, was responsible for determining its proper weight. "It had to be light enough for three-year-olds to carry," said Miller. That particular product went through "countless prototypes," according to Miller.
Miller, who lives in Pawtucket, R.I., and creates her line in a rented studio there, said that she developed the idea for starting the business because she could not find the kinds of toys that she was looking for.
When her two sons went through a dinosaur-mania phase, she says she found it impossible to obtain educational toys that touched upon evolution. In a column called "Inside Charlie's Playhouse," that was published on Oct. 20 in Dale McGowan's parenting blog, "The Meming of Life, " Miller said that while there were "some wonderful children's books about evolution…there were no toys, no manipulatives, nothing involving physical movement or the sheer insane joy of the history of life on this planet."
"No one is trying to present to young kids a scientific understanding of the world," said Miller."It does a disservice to young kids. It does a disservice to the scientific literacy of this country."
Miller is clearly enthused about her fledgling business. It is unlike anything she has ever done before. With a Ph.D. in demography and a master's degree in public health, she had previously worked exclusively in academia and in non-profits.
Charlie's Playhouse is an LLC (limited liability company) which has a board of advisors, mainly fellow academics, who have provided sweat equity for the company. Miller has recently hired a consultant who is helping her to write a marketing plan. Miller is hoping that eventually the business will provide a solid income stream for herself, her two kids and her husband.
Speaking about who she is aiming to sell the products to, she sees it as a "pretty targeted niche," naming scientists, humanists, teachers, and their families, as the most likely customers.
As of now, she has three products: the "Giant Timeline, "Ancient Creature Cards" and a poster of the timeline, which can be hung on a wall. She also sells some evolutionary-oriented clothing items.
McGowan said in an e-mail to HNN that his own children have the 18-foot evolution timeline and love it. McGowan thinks that Charlie's Playhouse offers a "unique contribution because evolution is central, not tangential to the point. They celebrate the variety and weirdness of life, but also the specific idea of change and relationships among forms through time. It also captures time scale and the distribution of life on land, sea, and air in a clear and effective way."
This Saturday, Miller will be marketing her wares at the Parenting Beyond Belief seminar given by McGowan at Harvard College. The event is co-sponsored by the Harvard Humanist Alumni Association and Charlie's Playhouse. (See next article.)
The cover of the timeline.
Photo courtesy of Kate Miller.
