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A SAFER TRAMPOLINE?

No springs or hard edges, a hidden frame that’s impossible to fall on and a flexible enclosure make Springfree Trampolines distinctive. Families can test one out at the new brick-and-mortar store in Issaquah, or at upcoming community events such as Issaquah Salmon Days or the Redmond Town Center Halloween Celebration. 3springfreetrampoline.com

LIVELY AND LOCALLY MADE q BY SYDNEY PARKER »Shop

> Romp > Chomp >> Shop LITTLE HANDS LOVE

EMI’S ACTIVITY BAGS Perfect for keeping little hands busy, Emi’s Stitch of Love Activity Bags come in 26 patterns, including spaceships, Minecraft, PAW Patrol and unicorns. Pasco-based designer Erin Kajikawa-Garcia turned her passion for sewing into an Etsy business. The bags can hold coloring books, crayons and whatever else your child desires. 3etsy.com/shop/emisstitchoflove

Math for Love founders Katherine Cook and Dan Finkel transform numbers into fun.

Making math merry

Math and love have always gone

hand in hand for Dan Finkel. As a child, he learned to love patterns, puzzles and problems while attending math camp in Massachusetts. While studying mathematics at University of Washington, he fell in love with Katherine Cook, the woman who would later become his wife. When the couple founded a company with a mission of transforming how math is taught and learned, Math for Love seemed like the perfect name choice.

Today, Math for Love is a Seattle-based math education consultancy and board game development company with a

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE > FROM ALIENS TO ZOMBIES

Board book Monster ABC, created by PNW-based twin brothers Kyle and Derek Sullivan, is a hilarious take on the alphabet featuring Aliens, Zombies and everything in between. By telling stories through monsters, the Sullivans aim to promote inclusion. “Kids don’t have to worry about a monster being a different gender or skin color, they can just say, that’s me, I identify with this creature,” says Kyle. 3hazydellpress.com

extraordinary relationships

between

students

and teachers are a given at university prep. ¶ uprep has grown to a campus of 580 students in grades 6 through 12, and 125 faculty and staff. ¶ We invite students on a path of critical inquiry, diverse perspectives, inclusivity, social justice, rigorous academics, arts, athletics, and joyfulness.

< Math for Love CONTINUED

worldwide reach. The Math for Love team strives to combine rigor and play to make math as fun for kids as it is challenging.

“I think we can turn kids off of math by making it too high-stakes,” says Finkel. “They feel like how they perform proves whether they are smart or not.”

After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014, Finkel and Cook created Prime Climb, a colorful 2-to4-player board game for kids ages 10 and up that highlights the power of prime numbers. The basic mechanics of Prime Climb are simple enough that kids enjoy the game, but the possible strategies are complex enough that even adults take pause. For kids ages 3 to 8, Finkel and Cook designed Tiny Polka Dot, a card deck that can be used to play 16 different games focused on counting, arithmetic and logic.

“We wanted to give parents a fun way to make teaching math really playful and natural, instead of it being high-pressure and punishing,” says Finkel.

When not inventing math board games, mentoring teachers, writing curricula or giving his “Five Principles of Extraordinary Math Teaching” TEDx Talk, Finkel and Cook contribute to the New York Times number blog, Numberplay. Math is an ingrained part of their work and leisure time; they truly model the rigor/play teaching philosophy that they espouse. The duo is driven by their conviction that math should be made accessible to everyone.

“Nobody really knows what the careers of the future are going to be,” says Finkel. “But math is such a commonsense superpower that it’s going to help kids have a full life, no matter what.” q mathforlove.com