Smartypants was conceived by us during the months of families “Sheltering at Home”.

We are a husband and wife team and we own and operate our own community newspaper.

The smarts of the team, MaryLee, is an active school teacher and reading specialist with decades of classroom experience.

J. D. is a career newspaper publisher, editor, writer and graphic designer.

We are the brains and brawn behind the creation of Smartypants.

When families began isolating at home in early spring of this year, school-aged kids stopped receiving the normal five to six daily hours of instruction that classroom learning was providing.

MaryLee was immediately concerned that elementary-aged kids, her kids, would become so far behind in their schooling that they would essentially lose a full year by the time school started up in the fall. 

She said the newspaper needed to do something to engage these kids and help keep them sharp.

We had already been exploring methods and products that we could use to get our newspaper into the hands of children and their young parents each week to grow our circulation. 

After exploring the limited (and cost-prohibitive) options available for an attractive, ready-built activity page, we set out to create our own — something that kids would look at and think, “this looks fun!” 

We named it Smartypants.

Our readers love it — young and old — they love it.

It’s so popular, we want to offer Smartypants to other papers at a cost that makes sense to independent weekly owners like us.

This weekly, full-page, full-color feature is now available for use in your newspaper at an incredible price of just $50 per month — no obligation, no commitment, and if you get it sponsored, you’ll be generating revenue with it. 

Try it a for a month, see if it works for you, again, its only $50 a month that’s at least four Smartypants pages. Sometimes five.

If you like it, keep it going, your readers will eventually demand it.

Each week you will receive a link to a full-page broadsheet pdf, right here, on this site, sized to fit your web, with a 6-column by 2-inch white space at the bottom where you can print your own message, or get the page sponsored, it will help pay the bills. We had folks ask us if they could sponsor the page?  It literally sold itself. 

Click the “Subscribe to Smartypants” link and get started!

Questions? Orders? Contact us!