Art's Story

As a math educator focused for nearly a half century on improving math learning, I spend most of my waking hours thinking about how to help every child succeed in math. It has long been recognized that for so many kids, success depends upon getting a great start gaining numbersense, as we call it. The research is clear, students who enter school with numbersense succeed. To have numbersense is to see the patterns in numbers for mathematics is the science of patterns. 

I thought that perhaps we could use our sidewalks to help young children develop numbersense. After all, I had never seen any child pass a hopscotch pattern without trying it. So I started to create some patterns for kids to walk, jump, and skip upon to build numbersense and have fun. 

Working in collaboration with Lesley University faculty and students we created Sidewalk Math and The Footbook: Steps to Developing Numbersense in Young Children to help educators and caregivers create Sidewalk Math for their young children.

Art Bardige