This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Night Light Stories: Couple Lights Way With Words

A pair of Loudoun educators create children's stories to promote education and family time.

Much like the bedtime stories they write, Chris and Melissa Bugaj’s first encounter seemed much like a fairytale. Both had moved to Ashburn to work at Hillside Elementary School. Chris was the speech pathologist and Melissa was a 4th grade teacher. On their first day in the state of Virginia, their paths crossed and the rest is history … or in their case, they are living happily ever after.

Both are creative by nature and share a passion for children’s education. Chris now serves as an assistant technology trainer for Loudoun County Public Schools, while Melissa supervises student teachers for universities throughout the state. They started writing stories for children in the early years of their marriage but learned that breaking into children’s publishing can be incredibly difficult. Despite this setback, they continued to write their own 'trunk books.'

After the arrival of two children, Chris and Melissa noticed that their daily conversations had been reduced to, “Did you remember to buy the milk?” or “Who pooped on the potty?” Melissa recalled.

Find out what's happening in Ashburnwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Desperate to release their creativity, they joked about developing a podcast. One night the brainstorming came to a head and the pair sketched out a Web site, selected a name and started the planning process for Night Light Stories.

The pair’s educational background led them to focus on audio stories.

Find out what's happening in Ashburnwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We recognize that while there are a lot of ways that kids learn, today’s classrooms are primarily auditory,” Chris explained. “When children listen to stories, it is a good precursor for when they go into the classroom and have to listen for learning.”

After creating the first podcast, the Bugajes marketed Night Light Stories to family and friends.

“Essentially we sent it to everyone we knew and they went nuts,” Melissa said. “From there, they sent it to everyone they knew.”

To keep up with the demand for fresh content, Chris and Melissa create one story each month. The creative process is very organic: One of them will have an idea, and over the course of about a week, between bedtimes and prepping dinners, they will allow the idea to grow into a full-blown story complete with activities and vocabulary.

According to the couple, coming up with ideas is the easy part; finding the time to develop the story presents the greatest challenge. Each story takes about a dozen hours of work before it’s ready to upload to the Web site.

“The time between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. are our magical hours,” Melissa said.

Each episode of Night Light Stories includes activities designed to engage the child's imagination along with a weekly visual dictionary. Many of the stories’ themes reference topics that are important to younger children.

“One of our central characters is Mojo the ferret, who gets into these crazy situations,” said Chris. “We come up with an idea and flesh it into a story that people really care about.”

One of their stories is called Stitches. A reader reported playing the story for his daughter as she sat in the emergency room waiting to get stitches after a fall. He explained that listening to the story put her at ease during the fearful situation.

While Chris and Melissa hope to continue building their fan base and library of stories with the hope of having their stories published, it is the creative process that keeps them going.

“There is no guarantee we will be published, so having a blast creating the stories and enjoying ourselves along the way is so important,” Chris said.

Night Light Stories are available for free at www.nightlightstories.net or via iTunes.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?