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In contrast to Math for Love, Overdeck targets parents, not educators. "If it's related to schools, it sounds compulsory," she says. "We want kids to feel about math the way they feel about dessert after dinner."
The Overdecks have always done math--bedtime and otherwise--with their kids, beginning when their oldest was 2: they would count the appendages on the stuffed animals in her collection. Last February, Laura began to share her family's math habit, e-mailing a few friends and relatives a sample problem. Since then, 20,000 people have signed up to receive her daily messages. Bedtime Math now has a staff of five; Laura still designs the problems, with the help of a calendar of dates worthy of a challenge, such as Cookie Monster's birthday and the anniversary of Alaska's statehood.
It's hard to argue that Bedtime Math isn't fun, but some are skeptical that it's a cure-all. "It won't be a slam dunk for everyone who uses it," says Finkel, who thinks math before bedtime revs kids up when they should be winding down. With the University of Chicago study yet to start, the strongest evidence that Bedtime Math can change children's skills comes from data collected from Snacktime Math, a program of Bedtime Math problems given to kids attending summer camp at a New Jersey Boys & Girls Club: more than 70% of the largely low-income students improved their skills after a six-week session.
Most of the other data in support of Bedtime Math are, for the time being, anecdotal. One mother told Overdeck that her child's zest for Bedtime Math enables her to use it as a threat: "If you don't brush your teeth now, no math tonight!" Sandy Smith, a Bedtime Math subscriber who attended the West Caldwell pajama party with her two preschoolers, says, "I always concentrated on the reading part, and I forgot to focus on the math." Her confession is all the more revealing because she is an elementary school teacher.
In early February, Bedtime Math threw a pajama party at Manhattan's brand-new Museum of Mathematics, where kids can do things like live out geometry by pedaling square-wheeled trikes over curved tracks. The Overdecks are major donors to the museum, where some 100 kids made their own card-stock clocks and tangrams while sipping hot chocolate. (Parents could opt for a splash of Kahlúa in theirs.)
"We want math to be warm and fuzzy," says Overdeck. Which isn't to say it should be easy. Thanks to popular demand, at the end of February, Bedtime Math is rolling out a new, Einstein-like level of difficulty, "the sky's the limit," for tweens, teens and even adults. When it comes to end-of-the-day problem solving, why should little kids have all the fun?