The career of the developer of Twinkletime began as a baby in the arms of a mother who sang and danced with her.  When she became a mother of three, she enjoyed singing, fingerplays, and other word games with her own little ones. After completing her Master's degree in special education, she took a position in her childhood alma mater teaching a class of handicapped preschool children. Over the course of her 24 year career,and with the help of the parents of the children, an artistic and perceptive teaching assistant, and many dedicated professionals, she developed a strategy for increasing children's language skills,increasing  participation in group activities, and building a love of story time.  Using songs and fingerplays and giving children  a way to choose their favorite ones allowed children to remain engaged in group activities for longer and longer periods of time.

Upon retiring from the classroom, Eileen continued to collect and write songs and fingerplays for classrooms where she served as an early childhood consultant. She was often requested as a consultant in classrooms with the challenging behaviors of autism because of her training and expertise with this disability. Teachers observed her success with children with autism using the visual fingerplay cards and asked her to provide cards for them.

Twinkletime is now available to teachers as an organized collection of 18 thematic sets of fingerplays.  Each set contains 10-12, 4 x 5 inch cards and a listening CD of the words and music. 

While providing parenting workshops in early literacy Eileen realized families do not need 180 songs and rhymes. They need just a dozen or so they can call up in an instant when a diversion or calming activity is required. A subset from the entire collection especially for parents became Refrigerator Rhymes.

Along the way, her talented friend and former assistant redrew the majority of pictures for the cards and a former student with autism developed the unique characters for the set, 'Community workers'. Another former student is currently developing the artwork for a new set called 'Spanish Rhymes'.

Eileen Ziesler, the developer of Twinkletime, continues to consult in early childhood and special education classrooms in the state of Wisconsin. She presents at early childhood and autism conferences on topics of early literacy, challenging behavior, and autism. She is the editor of the quarterly newsletter for the Autism Society of Wisconsin, Connecting Wisconsin.  Eileen writes a weekly column, Bringing Up Baby, soon to be offered online.  With watercolor artist, Janelle Thompson,  parent of her very first student, she is publishing a children's picture book, TOADS.