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Linda Mills has worked in the early childhood development field for over thirty years, and is
nationally recognized as a leader in employer-supported dependent care services.

Ms. Mills has vast experience working with early care professionals, parents, and students in a variety of settings. She has taught child development, early education curriculum and parenting classes at the
college level. Ms. Mills has advised policy-makers on child care issues, addressed U.S. and
European conferences on work-life issues, and lectures often at colleges and universities.

Ms. Mills received her B.S. in Child Development from the University of Rhode Island, and her M.S. in
Leadership in Early Childhood Education from Wheelock College.

"My grandchildren were born one after another, over the course of only a few years. I worked full time, but like any good grandmother, I wanted to relate to each of the new arrivals. I wanted to buy them things they would enjoy. So I went out dutifully and purchased new clothes, rattles and age appropriate toys, at high prices. Sometimes my grandchildren played with these things and sometimes not. Sometimes they gave a cursory attention to the present and then it went on the shelf to be forgotten. In any case, I never felt that I had made a meaningful connection through giving them ‘things’ and I knew that I wanted to be part of an active process.

When my first grandchild reached fifteen months, I began to think seriously about what I could bring with me on a visit, other than traditional store-bought, mass-produced gifts.

For over forty years I had been a consultant on early care and education, to a range of colleges, state governments and many other institutions. Now what could I do for my own family with all that experience? How could I translate my expertise into something I could share closer to home?  I realized that I had an application immediately available. I didn’t have to buy the latest gizmo to be able to spend quality time with them; in fact, toys could be counter-productive. That was the epiphany. I could actually provide my own resources for the perfect gifts, again and again, and quite simply.

I knew that projects for young children had to be fun and age appropriate. I also knew that projects could teach: small motor development, eye-hand coordination, and cognitive skills. I was much more interested in process than product from the outset. It mattered more what the child was doing and how he was doing it than what he came up with in the end. I wanted the child to learn to think. The home activities involved making decisions about materials, what to do with them and how to make pieces of things into something else, a very different experience from a drawing in a pre-designed coloring book. I also wanted to participate with my grandchild in all these discoveries, to share the joy, and establish a special relationship.

And that is how Grandma’s Project Bag was born. "

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Founder and member of National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies

Member of NAEYC- National Association of the Education of Young Children

Boston Club Womens Organization