Our Story

 Hello! I am Katie Smith. I live in Dayton, Idaho and am the proud wife of Jeremy and mom to Paige, Sadie, and Trey and grandma to Ezra. I happily welcomed bonus son, Brandon, into our family when my oldest daughter, Paige, was married in 2019 and they have a baby boy named Ezra. Paige works as a Music Therapist and Brandon is a Data Engineer. We also welcomed our second bonus son Pratt into our family as he and Sadie were married in 2022. Sadie works as a cosmetologist at Trends Salon in Preston and Pratt works as a Biologist for an organization called Pheasants Forever. Our son Trey recently returned from serving a mission for our church in San Bernardino, California and will be starting school at USU this fall.  I graduated from Utah State University with a degree in Family Consumer Science Education and love teaching!

You could say that I am a unique teacher because I have taught every level of education during my career! While studying at Utah State University, I was able to take many child development classes and student teach at the Adele and Dale Young Child Development Laboratory – USU’s preschool lab. Through this experience I developed a great love of working with preschool age children. I love finding age appropriate and researched based practices to help preschoolers learn. I used these practices while raising my three children and have successfully used them as a preschool teacher since.

I began my teaching journey as a student teacher at Cedar Ridge Middle School and Logan High School. My career launched with me teaching at Sky View High School, as well as, Utah State University. I then spent several years in the West Side School District advising the student body officers at the high school and teaching elementary students nutrition and life skills classes. Most recently, I have spent a couple of years teaching preschool students at a preschool in Smithfield.  I am now lucky enough to have a preschool in my home.

I am excited to put all of my experience and knowledge into practice at Little Learners Preschool. My philosophy of teaching is to introduce preschoolers to a range of wonderful subjects and broaden their basic knowledge of the world around them – preparing them academically for kindergarten while also cultivating their imaginations and strengthening social skills. I love to read and expose my preschool students to many books and subjects as I teach.

Education is a passion in the Smith household. My husband, Jeremy, has degrees in Elementary and Special Education, a Master’s in Gifted and Talented Education, and Administrative and ESL endorsements. He has taught 27 years as a special education teacher and 3rd and 4th grade teacher and as an Instructional Coach for Cache School District. Jeremy has also been a Teacher Fellow for the state of Utah as well as working on a task for the State Superintendent. He and I have always loved discussing education practices and how to help our students. We love to research new educational research and find ways of implementing them in our classrooms as well as being resources for each other. Our children are each unique in their learning approaches but are all readers and are actively involved in pursuing educational opportunities.

In my spare time, I love to be with my family. They are my greatest joy!  Additionally, I have always loved to sew and spent years costuming and directing plays.  I enjoy dabbling in graphic design and finding other ways to be creative. Our family loves to travel and makes memories together. I have been to 32 states and 4 different countries (Japan, Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas). I am also passionate about music and love to play the piano. I was a piano teacher for 24 years! My favorite pastimes are reading and playing board games. Our family ran a program for 19 summers called Retreat for Girls.

I hope I have the opportunity to get to know you and am excited for the potential chance to work together with you and your child here at Little Learners Preschool!