Hi! I’m Heather – puzzle lover, math teacher and aspiring scientist. That’s me in the picture, behind the wall of joyful kiddos. It has been my honor to work and play together with them in my role as their math and puzzles teacher. They have been a huge inspiration for me and have helped in many ways to bring Pixidoku to life – including doing a great job on the film day for our Kickstarter video, the day this picture was taken.
I believe that fun is an essential element of learning and that a good math education creates good problem solvers. Puzzles are my favorite way to bring both these values to life in my classrooms. So I’m always on the lookout for fun and challenging puzzles that are easy to bring into the classroom.
You can imagine my delight when I first discovered a cute and colorful version of Suguru puzzles on Jim Bumgardner’s krazydad.com website. I had already been using his site regularly because he makes it so easy to print off puzzles in a wide range of difficulty levels.
Pixidoku was just about perfect, but there was one problem. There was no obvious way to fill in the blank squares to complete the puzzle. Jim’s suggestions were to use letters to stand in for the pictures, or those who are artistically inclined could draw them in themselves. The kids used both methods with enthusiasm when I first rolled out the puzzles in my classes.
A couple months later, I had my lightning bolt moment. While working on an unrelated lesson plan I suddenly realized that I could make little card-stock tiles which would make Pixidoku solving much easier! The kids helped me cut out tiles from their favorite tile sets and our Pixidoku solving was much improved. But the tiles were tiny, hard to pick up, very flimsy and easy to lose. Plus, it was time consuming to cut them out.
Jim and I decided to team up and create high-quality Pixidoku materials for families and classrooms everywhere.
This mission of sharing Pixidoku with the world comes with challenges of its own. How can I start a business from scratch and build it to the point where it has the reach and visibility it deserves?
In 2018, kids from my class helped me get ready for our first Kickstarter campaign. They had a lot of fun doing the filming for the video. My favorite moment was when they took my simple idea for an opening sequence and turned it into something so much more magical and fun. Their creativity and ingenuity never ceases to amaze me.
In 2019 we were honored to receive the Brain Toy award from Academic’s Choice.
With the help of the award, we doubled our pledges in the second Kickstarter campaign!
We still have some growing to do before we’ll be ready for a full print run of the boxed set. With so many enthusiastic supporters I decided it was urgent to get some puzzles in their hands! So I designed the booklet format, which I’m able to print on my own, without the need for a big factory print run.
To get to the point where we can print full boxed sets, we need your help! Please buy booklets for friends and family and help us spread the word. Let’s get more puzzles in math classrooms!