Play To Learn: DreamBox Math Review & Give Away!

I was recently given the opportunity to review DreamBox for ABC & 123! DreamBox is an online math curriculum for grades K-3 that teaches your children math through the use of fun interactive games! We reviewed the Kindergarten and 2nd Grade math games.

DreamBox offers 2 pricing options:

• 6 months/1 child: $59.95
• 6 months/family up to 4 children: $99.95
• Click here for a FREE TRIAL!

How DreamBox works:

• When you first start, your child creates an avatar, they can even print and color it! (One comment my daughter made is that the avatars look like teenagers when you pick them, but then when you get into the game they look more like ‘babies’ and she didn’t like that. Just a suggestion for the DreamBox folk!)
• All of the lessons cover the key concepts from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics-recommended curriculum for each grade level—with over 100 lessons per grade.
• An initial placement lesson and ongoing assessment ensure that your child starts at the optimum point in the curriculum, and continually gets the right new lessons at the right time.
• The games encourage children through the many different adventure stories they can explore, and they can track their progress, collect rewards, and feel a sense of accomplishment.
• All aspects of the experience are adapted for each child—including the lessons, hints and instructional feedback, the pace, sequence, and much more—to help your child to feel engaged, motivated, and successful.
• And my favorite part: parents get progress report emails, tips for fun home activities, and an online "Dashboard" so you can easily follow your child’s progress.

Like I said, we played the Kindergarten and 2nd grade levels, but here are some images from their 3rd Grade level as well:


My Thoughts:
I especially like that the game gives your child an assessment test right off the bat followed by tutorials to show them how to play the games. Once they’ve passed through the assessment and tutorials they start into the actual curriculum. Each time they play the activities change and increase in difficulty, but not too much, the games make it so your child is successful but challenged at the same time.
I also really like the parent dashboard, its very easy to see how your children are doing in the program, and how well their progressing. This is especially helpful when you have multiple children!
The only thing my kids didn’t like was that it was difficult to go back to a different spot in the same level if you don’t like the one you picked the first time. It appears you have to play through the area you pick before you can move on to a different game in that same level. But once they got over that, it was no big deal.
I have to say that overall we liked this program, the games were easy to follow and they caught on very quickly. My kids fought over who got to play next, and since math was involved, I took that as a good sign!
Visit DreamBox for more info!

Now for the Give Away!

DreamBox has generously offered a 1 month free subscription for one of our readers!

This Give Away will be open until Friday May 14th, 2010 midnight EST!

Winners will be announced Sunday May 16th!

There are 3 ways to enter this give-away, PLEASE LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT FOR EACH ENTRY! (Please make sure you leave an email so we can reach you!)

• Leave a comment letting us know your interested!
• Visit the DreamBox Parents section and tell me what your favorite feature is for parents!
• Subscribe to ABC & 123 for an extra entry!

Good luck!

Disclosure: I was provided with a free DreamBox membership in order to test the products and give my own personal opinions on it. The opinions I have given are mine and may differ from others but were not influenced by the company or the free product provided.

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Counting Activities

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Thank you to The Adventures of Bear for submitting this engaging counting game.
The Cheerios Game

Learning Objective: to provide practice counting in a fun, engaging way.

This Counting Garden, created by Erin and featured on Quirky Momma, engages counting skills, listening skills, and patience.

This was a great activity for number sense. Anne from Teaching Two used hundreds charts to create puzzles for her children.  This activity proved to be very beneficial for the students in my (List Maker Katie) second grade classroom.  Sometimes we would also white out several numbers for the students to fill in.

Our Nifty Notebook featured a counting lesson using dice.

Here are a few games from the Harris family played with number boards to practice numbers and counting.

Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn explains how she taught the concept of zero.

Ten Kids and a Dog put together a cute counting and number recognition activity using trains.

The Fifth Street Academy sent us a link to a post filled with tips, toys, and tricks to make teaching counting less scary.


For the future, we are collecting submissions on activities to creatively teach the count by 2's, 5's, and 10's!

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Math on Mondays: Graphing

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The Adventures of Bear, featured a cute ice cream scoop pregraphing activity that starts with a fun dice and counting game and ends with using the scoops to make a simple bar graph. It's very hands on and a great maniuplative game for young learners.

The following activity was sent to us by Katie from Katie's Nesting Spot's mother-in-law, a retired middle school math teacher:
Take a simple outline picture, maybe from a coloring book, and put it on graph paper with numbered axis. For older children you can use positive and negative numbers. Then make a list of points around the picture(in order). Give the child the list and blank graph paper and have them make the picture by finding the points and connecting in order. I used to have a big collection of very elaborate ones because middle school kids love these. Sometimes they made the list of points for me to do and sometimes I gave them a list. An easy one is a maple leaf outline or a pumpkin which can then be colored.

Simple Yes/No Circle Time Graph: as seen in the picture above, the white posterboard area between the apple chart and blue 100s chart.

One thing most young children are quite knowledgable and are willing to talk about is themselves! Get to you know your kids, introduce simple graphing and comparision language, with a simple graph that can be easily incorporated into your circle time.

To Make:
Cut posterboard into a large rectangle, size to fit in your circle time or calendar area. Turn it into a t graph, by drawing a straight line down the center the long way and a horizontal one near the top. Draw a smile face on one side and a frowning face on the other at the top. Write YES by the smile face and NO by the frowning face.

Take pictures of each student, sized about one inch square; laminate for durability with clear packing tape. Attach velcro to the back. Attach velcro dots to the graph. If you have twenty students attach twenty velcro dots on both side of each graph.

Make a weekly or biweekly graphing question but writing it on sentence strips or by computer generating one. Tie the question into current studies, like letter of the week or seasonal activities.

Procedure:
Read the question of the day out load to the class. Shuffle student picture cards, pick one at a time, and have that student come up and answer the question. I always made it a point to require students to use a complete sentence when answering the question. For example, "Yes, I do have a cat." After each child has had a turn, discuss the results using comparision language such as more or less, how many, etc.

The following are some suggestions for YES/NO graphs:
Would you pet an alligator?
Do you like ants?
Do you think apes are cute?
Do you like apples?
Do you like to go camping?
Have you ever been to Canada?
Do you like carrots?
Do you have a cat?
Do you like chocolate chip cookies?
Have you ever milked a cow?
Would you like dinosaurs to become real?
Do you like dogs?
Would you ever like to live on a farm?
Do you like frogs?
Have you ever petted a giraffe?
Do you know how to play golf?
Would you jump into a pile of leaves?
Would you travel to the moon?
Do you like noodles?
Have you ever seen an octopus up close?
Do you like olives?
Who wore pajamas to school today?
Do you like pickles?
Do you like penguins?
Do you like salad?
Have you ever had a snowball fight?
Do you like spiders?
Are you missing any teeth?
Would you pet a tiger?
Do you like turtles?
Do you like to plant vegetables?
Should we make the pumpkin scary?
Are you afraid of the dark?
Do you sleep with the light on?
Will you go out of town during the break?
Do you like to eat turkey?
Do you like pumpkin pie?
Do you have a Christmas tree at home?
Have you ever made a gingerbread house before?
Do you like to eat gingerbread cookies?
Have you ever petted a rabbit before?
Have you ever dyed an Easter egg before?

Graphs can be easily incorporated into many themes. Some suggestions for cooperative class and individual graphs:

• Favorite color
• Favorite color of apple to eat or favorite way to eat apples, i.e. cut up, apple sauce, apple pie, apple bread, apple juice, etc. Both are a fun thing to do after a taste test!
• Number of people in your immediate family
• How many pets you have
• Holiday treats: Use popular candies associated with various holidays, for example: jelly beans by color for Easter. Sort by color and then graph how many of each you have.

Emily at Learning Vicariously, show us a great example on how easy it is to incorporate graphing with simple questions. Check out their family graph.

We'd love to see what you've been graphing! Be sure to send us in your activities!

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Math Monday: Fractions

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It is never too early to start introducing your child to the concepts related to fractions. Even the youngest children understand quite clearly what it means to split something in 1/2. Everyday opportunities abound for building on this important math skill.

Maria @ Homeschool Math Blog has 2 tutorial video blogs about teaching fractions.

Let's Play Math explains fraction models and supplies a card game.

Let's Play Math defines what students at different ages need to know about fractions.
Elementary Students
How to read a fraction.
How to work with fraction families.
“Of” means multiply.

For Older Students
A fraction is a division problem.
A fraction is a comparison.
A fraction is a reciprocal.

Math Lessons has a great article about creative ideas for teaching fractions.

They also have a page of fraction worksheets & games.

Hersheys Candy Bars are a great way to teach fractions: between 1/8 & 1 whole .
Check out The Hersheys Milk Chocolate Bar Fraction Book.

Working with your child in the kitchen is also another fraction teachable moment.

EdHelper also has worksheets for practicing fractions.

Suite 101 has fun ideas for dividing shapes into fractions to make art.

To practice with middle school students, Helping With Math is an age appropriate online resource.

Dominos provide a unique opportunity for practice with writing fractions.
Turn all of the dominos upside down. Have your child draw one. Using the dots on the domino work with your child to write the cooresponding fraction.

Examples:

2/6 (Older children can also practice reducting fractions = 1/3)
3/6 (1/2)
4/6 (2/3)

Turn the dominos over and write the new fractions
3
2
1- 1/2

Were you hoping for a BIG announcement regarding our Summer Plans?

Another clue will have to do, for now!

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123 Learn With Me: Counting

1-to-1 Correspondence
It is important that beginning counters learn 1-to-1 correspondence. Correspondence is the understanding that a number symbol stands for a group of objects. For instance, the #3 is used to symbolize 3 buttons. In this example the buttons are the "unit." Have fun experiementing with many different units to teach this concept.

Unit: Circle Punches A Listmaker's Life demonstrates an activity matching foam letters to cardboard punch outs.

Unit: Clothes Pin This fun idea from Blissful Moments allows you child to clip a clothes pin to each sticker on small paper plates. They can count as they put them on and as they take them off.

Unit: Stickers Ten Kids and a Dog shares a simple idea for using reinforcement tab stickers to practice counting.

The Adventures of Bear submitted a similar counting activity using stickers. Notice that she has provided scaffolding to help her young learn. (Meaning: the dots are available to put the stickers on)

Unit Erasers: Katie at Katie's Nesting Spot explains counting with counting boards.

Unit: Beans

Sparkle Power shares a simple & effective egg carton counting activity.

Unit: Nature

Amy at Teach Mama has a great idea for getting your kiddos outside in the sunshine and using mother nature for some learning fun! Check out her Backyard Number Boxes.

For more information about teaching basic counting skills read Tracey's post at Girls to Grow: Beginning Math Skills.

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