About Notch Hill Educational Products Inc.
Why do we exist?
We created Notch Hill Educational Products because we are passionate about setting children up for success in life by giving them a solid academic foundation.
A child with a solid academic foundation succeeds in school. Success in school plays a huge part in building self esteem, and a person with good self esteem is more likely to find sucess in life.
How did we start?
Joan Thornton, a retired teacher with more than 30 years of front line teaching experience, believed that children learn best when they don’t realise that they are learning. She began using board games as a vehicle for teaching kids early literacy and math skills. As the children excelled under her care, she became in demand, with her reputation reaching far and wide. In 2006 she told her daughter that, while she wanted to remain retired, she was still passionate about continuing to help kids learn the essential foundation blocks of their education. This was the birth of Notch Hill Educational Products IncTM. Together Joan and Nic have been compiling Joan’s tried and tested games into Educational GamePaks for parents to play with their kids.
NOTCH HILL EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTS IncTM launched their first GamePak THE NOGSTM OF NOTCH HILL in May 2009. It teaches children to read, sound and write the lower case letters of the alphabet.
A second GamePak covering the uppercase letters will be released in 2010. There are 8 more GamePaks planned, taking children to a Grade three level in reading, writing and maths skills.
We care about the planet
Notch Hill Educational Products is committed to being an environmentally responsible company. All products are created using recycled or recyclable materials where possible.
About the Founders
Nicola Lott
Nicola is passionate about supporting parents help their children learn through play.
She started down her chosen career path early in life, when her mother Joan started to teach her to read using games. In her first few years at school it became apparent that Nicola had some learning challenges, later diagnosed as Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. Joan persevered with her play based methods and after much hard playing Nicola began to succeed. In fact, after studying psychology/ child development and later, Product Design she graduated with a BA at the top of her program from the University of Plymouth in the UK.
Nicola loves teaching, to date she has taught adults, teens and children in 4 continents and at sea. She has worked with people who range from able bodied to extremely mentally and physically challenged and just about every place in between.
Today, Nicola lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her experiences of succeeding by learning through play as a child and teaching through play as an adult have given her a unique insight that she loves to share through the Notch Hill Product Line and through the workshops she facilitates.
Joan Thornton
Joan began her teaching career as a teacher’s aide at Nicola’s elementary school 30 years ago. She started by taking children for extra reading practice. After a while she began to see patterns in the behaviours of the students who were struggling. She created games that practiced the skills the children were missing and began playing them with the children. The children loved the games, and began to learn fast in her care. Joan is highly creative and loves a challenge – she loves to figure out where children are struggling and work out a program to help them. She has been highly successful over the years and has given hundreds of children the gift of a solid academic foundation.
When her husband’s job took her to Nigeria, Africa, she became the special needs teacher at the local international school. She helped many more children through the use of her ever expanding collection of games in the 10 years she lived there. As her reputation became known, she travelled to other towns in Nigeria to help more children.
Since retiring in BC, Canada, she has discovered a passion for relaxing in hot tubs…and generally being retired. She has been tutoring select students, but has a deep desire to continue to help more children than ever before. Notch Hill Educational Products IncTM, is the genesis of that desire.
