A Conversation With Bedtime Math Founder Laura Overdeck

Recently, I caught up with Bedtime Math founder Laura Overdeck. The math lover, author, and entrepreneur has published three books—a fourth comes out this June—in a popular series that encourages parents to read and do math problems with kids from pre-K to 5th grade.

Additionally, she’s piloting a parent’s initiative in 23 school districts nationwide with her Bedtime Math app, which provides a fun, daily math problem at three difficulty levels. More than 250,000 have downloaded the app since its debut.

Overdeck offered the following tips about how to help students (and parents!) find enjoyment in math:

You may love math and communicate that in your classroom, but it’s possible that students are getting a very different message at home. Overdeck has noticed that parents who don’t like math themselves are nervous about their kids’ math homework.

Illustrating the real-world application of math can help reduce math anxiety. Parents have told Overdeck that using the app improved their attitudes about the subject, which translated to kids, too. “It shows we can turn people around at any age,” she says.

Back in 2015, researchers at the University of Chicago studied the use of Bedtime Math. Publishing their work in the journal Science, they found that on average, students who did math on the app improved their skills by an extra three months in one school year compared to those who didn’t use it. When math becomes a fun activity that’s done at home each night, it changes how math is spoken about in the household, she says.

In the classroom, this could translate into talking about math when you might not expect it. For example, skip counting students in the lunch line, or identifying patterns in and around your school.

It’s understood that when students like a subject, they’ll learn and perform better. A recent longitudinal study published in Child Development found that German students in grades 5-9 did better in math when they took pride in their work compared to those who didn’t.

“When kids like something, they will follow up for more,” Overdeck says.