Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Pam Gittleman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Pam, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
There are so many educational, personal and professional experiences that have led me to becoming an author and entrepreneur in my sixties, but the single throughline in my background that led to my current career is music……playing it, listening to it, singing along with it, teaching it, and finding joy in sharing musical experiences with others, especially kids.
I’ve always been musical. I play flute, piano, guitar and sing. I wrote lots of songs and cheers at my summer camp. It’s always been a great source of joy in my life. But I initially did not pursue a music-related career. With a BA in English and an MBA with a concentration in marketing, I set out to pursue a career in advertising account management. It was fun, creative, and challenging but once my kids were born, I decided to leave the corporate world. I reinvented myself as a preschool music teacher. I discovered that I was able to put my talents to work in the most joyful job ever and found a calling that helped define my purpose going forward.
Throughout my 20+ years as an early childhood educator, I learned about the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) in achieving academic, behavioral, and lifetime success. Updating nursery rhymes to be more relevant, putting beloved, whimsical characters in situations that would model and convey messages of kindness, empathy, and gratitude, and pairing the rhymes with tools for social and emotional learning (an emoji chart and guiding questions) allowed me to use my knowledge and skills to provide fun and educational stories for a new generation of young learners. With rhyming to support the language development that comes from hearing and processing rhymes, rhythm and music, writing the books and collaborating on recording those updated rhymes provided a new career path that has allowed me to create meaningful literacy and musical experiences for preschoolers and the adults who love them. I’ve found purpose and fun as I pursue this endeavor.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’ve been an early childhood music educator for over 25 years. During that time, I’ve loved reading/singing traditional nursery rhymes. I love that they’re whimsical, that they’re rhythmic and have an inherent musicality, that they support imagination and language development, and that they are “sticky” and memorable. However, I noticed that young children and families seemed increasingly unfamiliar with so many of them. I discovered that many parents and teachers found them too old-fashioned and “cringey” to share with their kids. After all,
-Three Blind Mice get their tails cut off by a carving knife! Ouch!
-Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall and can’t be put back together again. Bummer!
-“Ring Around the Rosie” is reportedly about the circular rash on bodies infected with the plague. Posies were kept in pockets to mask the smell of the dead and the ashes that “all fell down.” Yikes!
-Rock a Bye Baby is supposed to be a soothing lullaby yet the cradle falls out of the tree with the baby in it! Scary!
I realized that as a genre with important developmental benefits, nursery rhymes could be modified to have positive messaging and educational impact. So I decided to leverage the inherent appeal of traditional rhymes in a way that would be more compelling to everyone and created Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times®, a collection of updated nursery rhymes that are less “dark”, outdated and irrelevant than their traditional versions, with new storylines that nurture kindness, empathy and gratitude. (Think three kind mice who help each other get some cheese, rather than three blind mice whose tails get cut off by a carving knife! Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall, but his friends help him up and care for him rather than him being left there in pieces! You get the idea.)
At the same time, I discovered a wealth of compelling research on the importance of fostering social and emotional intelligence. That research indicates that social and emotional learning (SEL) is critical for high-quality early childhood education and foundational to improved academic, behavioral, and lifetime outcomes. I really wanted to create fun, memorable, easy-to-access SEL content for preschoolers and the adults who love them. Updating nursery rhymes to be more relevant, putting beloved and whimsical familiar characters in situations that would model and convey messages of kindness, empathy, and gratitude, and pairing the rhymes with tools for SEL (an emoji chart and guiding questions) were important ways for me to retain the educational, memorable qualities of traditional rhymes for a new generation. Making sure the rhyming and musicality of these new rhymes were on point was also an important goal so that the rhymes would support the language development that young children’s brains are hard-wired for when it comes to hearing rhyming words and processing rhythm and music.
I’m proud to have created a brand that allows our updated rhymes to be accessible across a range of forms, formats and media:
MUSIC:
-The Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times album recorded by Raffi and Lindsay Munroe, released in May 2022, contains 15 of our updated rhymes.
-The Laurie Berkner Sings Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times EP, released in August 2024, contains 3 of our updated rhymes.
You can find all the songs and lyrics here: (https://www.forkindertimes.com/music)
We are thrilled to say that we have surpassed 10 Million song streams for the 18 songs that have been recorded to date.
YOUTUBE CHANNEL: (https://www.youtube.com/@nurseryrhymesforkindertimes)
We launched our YouTube Channel in June 2022. Since that time, we have created and posted 46 videos. Most of those videos are low-stimulation, lightly-animated versions of our updated rhymes underscored by the music recorded by Raffi and Laurie Berkner. Those videos utilize the same format in that, after the story/song is complete, we include some additional content that poses questions to young viewers to help build social and emotional intelligence, followed by a “rhyme time” segment to support language development. We also have compilations of some of those videos grouped by themes that are relevant to young kids, like friendship, family, animals, etc. And, we have a series of videos, Pointers from Pam, that are targeted towards parents and teachers, providing educational information about social and emotional learning, language development, and the role of music and stories in supporting those skills.
WEBSITE: (https://www.forkindertimes.com/)
Our website provides a landing spot for those who are interested in learning more about our brand. It provides access to all our assets and explanations for why we do what we do. Importantly, it also includes resources and activities for parents/teachers in the form of mini “lesson plans” for each rhyme, as well as links to educational materials that support our mission to connect rhymes/stories/music to early childhood development.
BOOKS: (https://www.forkindertimes.com/book)
Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times, Vol. 1 (containing 8 rhymes with a retail release date of Oct 2023) and Vol. 2 (containing 9 additional rhymes with a retail release date of Mar 2025) contain the rhymes that have been recorded in song and made into videos. To date, I have sold or donated over 800 books either through direct sales at book festivals and other events, and online via Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, and other booksellers.
We are excited to launch Volume 2 of our book next month and are actively seeking new music partners to record additional updated rhymes in the future that could become the basis for a Volume 3 of our book collection.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1 . Persistence and Collaboration: I was able to acknowledge that, not only did I not know how to proceed at many junctures in this entrepreneurial endeavor, but I didn’t even know what I didn’t know! It’s important to realize that everyone you interact with may have information that you didn’t even know would be useful to advance your mission. It’s important to embrace the uncertainty in order to persist and find ways to collaborate with others who have experience or expertise that you don’t have. I work with a young creative and social media management team and I’m always asking them, “What else should I be asking? What am I not thinking of?” Being humble and open to establishing collaborations with those who are “in the know” can really be the key to successfully bringing your own idea to fruition.
2. Kids Count! To stay true to the idea of “Nothing about us, without us!”, it’s been important for me to remember that while teachers, parents and caregivers are the decision makers about the content they buy and share with their kids, kids are the end users and their feedback is critical. If they are not engaged with the content, adjust the content and/or figure out new ways to make the existing content more engaging!
3)Failure is Highly Underrated. The number of lessons I’ve learned in life, and particularly in this endeavor, all resulted from setbacks, miscalculations, and less-than-optimal decisions that ended up sending me on a new and improved path forward. If at first you don’t succeed, iterate! Update your approach with the feedback you’ve received and try again! This relates back to persistence and is key to realizing your vision and delivering on your mission.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
We are always looking to collaborate in each of our media spaces to increase our reach so our updated rhymes can be enjoyed by more children and families, particularly those in underserved communities with limited resources for early childhood support and education. Here are a sampling of those we’d love to connect with:
Books/Education: The teams at Scholastic that provide early childhood books/programs/resources who understand the potential for Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times® to enjoy success on both the educational and consumer sides of their business.
Book Publishing: I’ve had to use a hybrid publisher to get Vol 1 and 2 of Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times® into print. If any publishers are interested in taking over publication of our book series and adding to it, I would love to connect with them. Recognizing that this is a concept with “legs” in terms of merchandising (lots of characters across multiple rhymes that could be available as plushies, squeeze toys that play the music, coloring books, etc.), I would love to meet an acquisitions editor at one of those publishers to explain the concept further.
Book Awareness/PR: Looking at you Ms. Rachel, Jenna Bush or Jimmy Fallon! Or other TV/Podcast personalities like Kelly Clarkson, Tamron Hall, Gayle King, Katie Couric, Al Roker, the last 3 of whom are relatively new grandparents!
Music: We’ve already got Raffi and Lindsay Munroe, as well as Laurie Berkner on our roster of children’s musicians and performers who created and recorded 18 of our new rhymes. Who’s next to record the as-yet unpublished rhymes? Would love to connect with The Wiggles, or any number of pop artists who have new babies like Mandy Moore, Justin Bieber, Lea Michelle, Cardi B, Darren Criss, John Mulaney, to name a few, that might like to record a new children’s album.
Streaming Show: We’ve made 17 recorded rhymes into videos. I can’t help but think that with all the endearing characters in our canon of rhymes……the over-eager Humpty Dumpty, the cool and calm Jill in Jack and Jill, the pickle-eating Peter, the wise owl brother and sister in Rock a Bye baby, and our brand ambassadors, the Three Kind Mice–Brie, Gouda and Cheddar–we’ve got the makings of a great children’s show complete with music, rhymes, themes of kindness, empathy and gratitude, and the potential for a wide range of episodes and storylines. I’d love to connect with someone from Disney, PBS Kids, or Nickelodeon to discuss the potential to develop a Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times® show.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pamgittleman.com/ and https://www.forkindertimes.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forkindertimes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ForKinderTimes
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pam-gittleman/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nurseryrhymesforkindertimes
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