Sidewalks are more than a walkway. They become a playground and neighborhood game. HopScotch is a game hand drawn with chalk that combines number sequencing, one foot and two feet balance and agility. Growing up in South Bend, In at age 10, I was the neighborhood champ. There was a simple order to our home made games. The joy of movement as we watched each other take a turn. Our respective mirror neurons jumping internally as the person moved up and down the board.

Land the pebble piece on the first square and hop over it and back and pick it up and move onto the next square. Each square was more challenging to land the pebble on and to jump over the same square and pick it up on the way back. Numbers became a game to challenge ourselves and our friends. We didn’t have to worry about repetitious school drills and homework practice. Now, the numbers became our roadmap and floor plan to more exciting adventures.

Connecting the dots was one of my favorite playful uses of numbers. I always felt I couldn’t draw well. At least I never had much positive feedback from teachers. My first outside our home art critic was a well meaning Sunday School teacher. We were all asked to draw a picture. The reward for the “best” picture was the privilege of collecting our pennies and nickels offering. At age 5 I was drawing some nice fluffy clouds. “Can you draw anything else,” the teacher asked. I said, “no” and kept drawing my clouds. My picture still won. I think it was because I was the brand new kid.

Connecting the dots made sense to me. I knew my numbers in order. I could recite them, write them and now I could connect them! My pencil leaped from number 1 to number 2, 3, and upwards. Soon all the lines drawn connected all those dots. Voila! A picture of a clown or a horse or whatever appeared on the page. Oh! The magic of following the order and sequence to create my own picture that I could now color with crayons.

“Connect the dots” is a favorite phrase of mine. In my brain the neurons do an instant recall of those glorious days of dot connecting and picture making. The mental model helps me put order to chaos by ordering and sequencing any and all information. The magic never dies.