Denise, Kelly, Connor and Emma Leigh Bossard created Erudition to help children learn to read in a fun environment. The genesis of our game began when Connor was in kindergarten and we were working with him on sight words, as recognizing these high frequency words was part of his school’s curriculum.

We began using index cards, but Connor lost interest within a couple minutes. We began implementing “sight words for food,” a little game where Connor would identify a sight word to earn his meal (don’t worry, we didn’t starve our child). We thought there must be a better way to introduce these words to children. During a “game night,” which is a family favorite in our house, the answer came to us; we would create a board game in a community setting and use sight word recognition for players to advance in the game.

Since this simple idea in early 2007, we have spent countless hours and solicited feedback from friends and family to develop the game. The creation of this game has become a full time job for Denise, and has consumed much of Kelly’s free time. Through evening brainstorming sessions, Denise and Kelly created a rough draft game board with a pencil and poster board. We took game pieces and a die from another board game and used index cards with handwritten sight words to play our first game. This was a big improvement over sight words for food, but still needed a lot of work.

Over the next couple months, we tweaked the game board and developed our list of sight words. We began to explore the idea of mass producing our game and selling it. After careful consideration, we decided to take a risk and created a company called Acumen Associates LLC. Knowing we could not sell a game made of index cards and sketches on a poster board, we began searching for an illustrator. During Thanksgiving break with the Bossard clan, we struck a deal with our niece, Christy, to handle the graphic design tasks. Working nights and weekends, Christy applied her creative magic to our rudimentary drawings and provided us with five Erudition game board prototypes. We applied a little creative juices of our own - we categorized our sight words by level of difficulty and printed them on corresponding colored cards.

We sent three prototypes to kindergarten teachers to test the games appeal, educational value and to solicit overall feedback. With the remaining two prototypes we sent one to the U.S. copyright office and kept one to show potential buyers. The response from our kindergarten teachers was very positive and convinced us that we had a saleable product (Only time will tell if we are good at spotting a marketable product or are simply biased and gullible). Our next task was to find a way to mass produce Erudition. After soliciting quotes and discussions with a few game manufacturers, we selected Grand Prix International. Since most game manufacturer’s minimum lot size is 5,000 games, we quickly realized that we needed financing.

Despite the declining housing market, credit crunch and subsequently declared recession, in the summer of 2008 we obtained a home equity line of credit, which was sufficient to pay for 5,000 games and related tooling, testing, shipping and numerous other costs. Despite our excitement, we knew we had some work to do before launching Erudition. But, we had no idea that our game would consume our family over the next few months. We became true believers of Thomas Edison’s quote that “Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”

Based on the feedback we received regarding our prototype we decided to provide a simple definition for each sight word. This sounds easy but have you ever seen the dictionary’s definitions of common words like “be” or “color?” Defining almost 300 words in a way that a five year old can understand was a real challenge. In addition to pretending to be William Webster we worked with Christy to design the card templates, game box and instruction sheet. We then populated approximately 300 card templates using Adobe Illustrator (a graphic design software that we had never seen before) and proofed everything multiple times before submitting Erudition to the game manufacturer.

With the design phase complete, our focus shifted to marketing our game and implementing our business plan. We opened a bank account and obtained business checks, letterhead and business cards. We created a brochure and reserved a booth at the International Toy Fair in New York City and consulted a friend regarding the best way to present ourselves at the fair as we have never attended anything of this nature. We created a website and thankfully received assistance from two friends, helping us tremendously as we had no idea how to create a web page.

This has been a remarkable experience for our entire family. We received over-whelming feedback from friends and family and much needed assistance when we entered uncharted territories. When in doubt, we harnessed the amazing power of the internet to research and address unfamiliar issues. Our son, Connor, learned his sight words and excelled in kindergarten at both reading and math. Our daughter, Emma Leigh, has also benefited greatly from this experience as she knew all the basic sounds and over 100 sight words when she entered kindergarten.

As for Denise, her children inspire her and her husband motivates and drives her (not crazy) to succeed. She enjoys working with him and realizes there is no one that she would rather take a risk with. Assuming the Erudition adventure goes well; our intent is to continue to create children’s educational games for the whole family to enjoy. Denise Bossard is a CPA and has her MBA and is the president of Acumen Associates. Mr. Kelly Bossard, is a CPA and CFE and currently works in Washington, D.C. We have a son, Connor, and a daughter, Emma Leigh. We also have a dog, named Sydney, two birds called Little Guy and Lily and a hermit crab called Donovan McCrab.