While studying Music Education at Brigham Young University, Shelle thrilled at the teaching philosophies of early music educators. The ideas of Curwen, Edwin Gordon, Kodaly, Orff, and Dalcroze sounded so appealing and accurate that she longed to make them part of her teaching.

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After graduating with a BA in Music Education, Shelle taught voice and piano lessons in her private studio for 9 years.  In 1997, with a 3 and a 1-year-old, she began looking for a curriculum that contained the philosophies and methods she had learned while in college, but there was not one that she felt taught music in the ‘right way’.  She began constructing her own curriculum for children's music lessons, which incorporates solfege, ear training, piano skills, note reading, and classical music study in a playful class setting. She then taught the first Let’s Play Music classes with her 4-year-old daughter Sydney, in 1998.

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As the popularity of Let’s Play Music grew, Shelle could not handle the demands of all the classes, so in 2000 she and Amberlee Moffett began training other teachers to teach the Let’s Play Music method.  By 2007 there were over 50 teachers and Shelle hired Teacher Advisors Julie Fischbeck, Marci Flowers, and Jenny Smith to help train and mentor new teachers.  They continued to build the business together and by 2011 when it had grown to 250 teachers, her husband, Dave joined the company to run the executive and operations sides of the business.