Our Mission

As a fellow parent, I'd like to ask you these three questions:

1. Does your child love math?

2. Does your child’s math textbook look any different from the one you had at that age?

3. Do you know any grown ups that can solve an algebraic equation?

If you answered ‘no' to all these questions - take heart. As a fellow parent I also answered ‘no’ to these questions. This answer is unacceptable to me so I set out to do something about it.

Let’s face it: Whether we are balancing our budget or getting the best deal on a new car, we not only need math, we need to have a commanding understanding of it.

Sadly and as a nation, we don’t have that understanding. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the United States is below average in math literacy, and dead last in the entire world in digital problem solving.

In this incredible country of ours, we cannot let this continue. We must change our standing in the world. We do this by changing the relationship our children have with math.

As a twenty-year educator, let me share with you what I see, and a way out of this dire situation. At a young age, children are introduced to storybooks that look like this:

Children's reading materials are vibrant, humorous and engaging.

In addition to the rich graphics of any storybook, learning how to read (and write) employs a number of outlets that allow for success: creativity, oration, spelling, punctuation and grammar. If you are good at any one of those outlets, you’re more than probably willing to venture in to another outlet. That confidence leads to willingness to try, and willingness to try leads to genuine learning.

In contrast, math is presented like this:

In contrast, children's math materials are dull, dry, and un-engaging.

To make matter worse, you have one outlet with math: Your answer. And it is either right or it is wrong.

As adults, we know that we learn when we get things wrong. But how easy it is for a young mind to internalize that sense of wrong in to self-perception? All too often a child thinks it is not the answer that is wrong, it is they that are wrong.

So, our kids are bored with math because of the way we present it, and when they do math, they usually feel bad. As good parents we double down in the face of all that. We get a little tiger-ish with them (I know I have!) and we tell them they have to 'just do the work.'

As a fellow parent I don’t have to tell you how effective that approach is (hint: it isn’t). When the problem is framed in this way, let me ask you this: Who among us wants to take on a boring task where the outcome is, “you are wrong?”

If these feelings persist year over year, math gets de-prioritized. We look for other topics for our child to excel in. We resign ourselves and our children to accept that math is just 'one of those things that is difficult' and 'not for us.' Welcome to our country's last-place trophy in math. And if we are not careful - it gets worse. Before you know it we’re adults, and we're struggling with our checking account and wondering why our credit card bill never seems to go down.

Thru the vehicle of Numberdog, my husband and I are dedicated to changing this.

Here are the four principles we believe, and the four principles that are at the foundation to Numberdog.

Software holds the key to our success.

Isn’t it amazing what has happened to the world in thirty years? Every time I stop and think about this, I am floored. Of course to our son I sound like an old fuddy duddy when I talk about rotary phones and getting a letter in the mail and a world without computers. This is a source of on-going humor in our house.

But the real truth is that the last thirty years have been nothing short of a miracle of technology. I can talk to almost anyone in the world at anytime, instantaneously. By asking a voice activated robot, I can listen to any song by any artist, from any era. Every place I shop can electronically talk to my bank so that I can make a purchase. Soon I am told, I won’t even be driving myself around anymore. All of it is amazing and a wonder to behold.

Somehow and in a very real way, education - particularly elementary school - has been left in the technological dust. I look at my son’s math textbook and I see the same sort of thing I saw as a little girl. This is not the fault of any teacher, school district, PTA member, or board of education. Indeed, it is our responsibility as a society to built these tools for our schools to leverage, no less than the tools we as a society have built for commerce, communication, and entertainment - to name but a few. To a very great extent, we have not built this level of sophistication for our schools and our children. Not yet.

(Yes, ok, math apps are out there, But they are hit and miss, usually display low production value, and don’t align with core curriculum. And the leads me to my second point).

Not just software, but great software.

For those of us who consider ourselves a gamer (yes I admit), we know the difference between something truly great (Hello BOTW) and something not so great (I won’t name names). For those of us who are not gamers, we need only look to movies to see a qualitative difference from movie to movie. A truly great movie fires on all cylinders: Acting, writing, direction, and production value.

While we are dedicated to the very best in production and direction for Number Dog, and we have a veteran team backing that up. Our team members have worked for ILM, Electronic Arts, and Disney to name a few. They've also won the Game CriticsAward, The Game Developer's Choice Award, and been nominated for an Emmy. The bottom line is, our team has learned one thing: we don’t put it out there until it truly shines.

Numberdog is also multi-disciplinary in nature. It includes math facts, math application, digital instruction, and take-home worksheets. All of it adheres to core curriculum and our rigid standards of excellence. We’re not a one-off app on your phone for your child to practice addition. We are a complete source of math instruction and application for parents, teachers, and children. Number Dog will transform your child by boosting their confidence in math facts and arithmetic. And we're just getting started.

When math is applied, it comes alive.

Writing the answer of "4" on a worksheet is not as sticky in a child's mind as helping Number Dog solve 2+2.

Understanding that you get a better score from 4x5 than you do 3x6 is more powerful the merely memorizing the product of either.

Solving a tricky puzzle about triangles is inherently more engaging that describing what a triangle is.

Get a child to laugh and you have a convert for life.

Math and laughter? Together? Abso-freaking-lutely.

My favorite teachers in school were the ones who made me laugh while they taught. I laughed, I listened, I learned.

Numberdog will make your child laugh and that’s entirely intended. It is a key piece of our production value. As we have a ways to go to complete Numberdog, we want to really enrich the humor aspect as we move forward. And this leads to:

Number Dog is a work in progress.

Or original plan was to launch Numberdog in 2021. But with all the changes happening to our schools and the challenges imposed on our teachers, we realized we could release what we have now as a way to help everyone in need.

Our accelerated release schedule demands that we ask for your support up front, and this is why we are crowdfunding at this time.

The good news is we are offering subscriptions at a greatly reduced price. It also means we hope you will join us by actively participating in feedback on the development and production of Numberdog.

Thank you so much in advance! Click on over to the crowdfunding page and pledge generously!

Parenting in Community,

Heather