Announcing the DreamBox Learning K-3 Math preview

So we created a K-3 Math parent preview, complete with sample lessons.  Play the sample math lessons, read about what’s new in our 3rd grade math games, or take the K-3 Math tour. DreamBox Learning K-3 Math offers over 100 lessons, an expanded curriculum, and brand-new virtual manipulatives.

This snippet is all we can show for now.  Feel free to pass the preview on.  DreamBox Learning isn’t just another game — it’s an excellent resource for parents, teachers, and homeschoolers.  What do you think of the lessons? Anything you hope to see in K-3 Math? Let us know below!

Chow down on your favorite pie (after you measure its diameter, of course).  And while you savor your dessert, read our 14 delicious facts about Pi.

14 delicious facts about Pi

1. Pi is the number of times a circle’s diameter will fit around its circumference
2. There is no zero in the first 31 digits of Pi
3. Pi has 6.4 billion known digits – it would take a person approximately 133 years to recite all of them without stopping
4. At position 763 (known as Feynman Point), there are six nines in a row
5. Some people believe Pi contains the answers of the universe. (But on some days, a slice of pie holds all the answers to the universe!)
6. It took nine hours for the Memorized-Digits-of -Pi world record holder to recite over 44,000 digits
7. Pi Day (March 14) is also Albert Einstein’s birthday!
8. Pi is irrational — no, not like my mother. An irrational number is one that cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers
9. Johann Lambert proved Pi is irrational in 1768
10. The symbol for Pi (π) has been used regularly for 250 years
11. Pi has been studied by the human race for 4,000 years
12. Many mathematicians claim that it is more correct to say the a circle has an infinite number of corners than to view a circle as cornerless. Stop and think about that for a second.
    
13. Pi was first calculated by Archimedes of Syracuse. He was reportedly so engrossed in his work that he did not notice when the Roman soldiers conquered the city of Syracuse. When a Roman soldier approached Archimedes, he yelled in Greek “Do not touch my circles!” The Roman soldier quickly cut off his head and moved on.
14. If you printed a billion decimals of Pi in ordinary font it would stretch from New York City to Kansas. We recommend you don’t try and print out Pi!

Find more information at (and our thanks to):

http://www.exploratorium.edu/pi/history_of_pi/index.html

http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/07/03_pi.html

Drum roll, please…

And our third-grade beta testers will be: Benjamin, entered by Noel Bush; Bella, entered by Victoria Rana; and Edgar, entered by Jennifer Shotts! Congratulations to our winners and we hope our 3rd grade math games keep them up after their bedtimes practicing math. (OK, not too long after their bedtimes!)

Thank you to everyone who wrote on our Facebook wall, tweeted to us, or commented on our contest blog post. The messages of support from our fans has been tremendous and we’ve come a long way since first premiering DreamBox’s kindergarten through 2nd grade math games, one year ago.

We can’t wait to announce third grade to the rest of the world! Please check back with us because IT’S COMING SOON!

Didn’t mean to shout. We’re just so pleased for our third-graders who will get to play in the DreamBox private beta.

And if you’re wondering about World Maths Day 2010, which we’ve been glued to, the total number of questions answered was 479, 732, 613 – a new world record! Avit P from Team Thailand was number one in the 5-8 age range, Kaya G from Australia (last year’s champion!)  conquered the 9-13 age range, and David A from Australia took a gold medal in the 14-18 age range.

Everyone is a winner in Lucky Math Month – download the April DreamBox Math Activity Calendar, and have fun with math all month!

“But how?” you ask. “It’s not March 3rd yet!”

It’s March 3rd somewhere in the world, though, and the competition exists across the world GMT, so students ages 5 through 18 can play each other until it is no longer March 3rd anywhere.

As of this blog post there are 41,580 participants online and over 128,948,000 correct answers! It looks like World Maths Day’s goal of breaking last year’s record of 452,681,681 correct answers is well under way.

So far Avalon Elementary’s 3rd grade class is leading the age 5-8 classroom category with 119,934 correct answers and Cypress Creek High School is rocking the age 14-18 classroom category. Even cooler, though, is the fact that students from all over the world are uniting in the name of math.

We can’t wait to see the final results of World Maths Day.

March Math Days and Highlights

World Maths Day 2010: March 3

Start prepping your kids now for World Maths Day 2010! It’s the biggest math competition in the world, where kids compete and solve math problems from across the globe in “real time.”  Uniting the world for the sake of math is a powerful idea, so we encourage all of our readers to get ready for World Math Day or, as they call it around most of the globe: World Maths Day! Register your child or classroom on the World Math Day website.

World Math Day Video

Tune into DreamBox Learning for all the World Math Day highlights as they happen! You can also keep updated by reading the Ambassadors’ Official Blog. And please comment below if your child will be joining in on the fun.

National Pi Day: March 14

On March 14, enjoy a slice of your favorite pie in honor of Pi Day. But first, measure its diameter! On Pi day, tweet your favorite flavor of pie to @DreamBox_Learn.

St. Patrick’s Day: March 17

Top of the morning to you. It wouldn’t be lucky math month without St. Patrick’s Day!  Welcome spring with our Pot of Golden math games and fun activities.

We hope you enjoy the DreamBox March’s math activity calendar. Whether you’re enjoying unseasonably warm spring temperatures as we are, or still walking through a winter wonderland, you’ll have fun kids’ math activities on the fridge all month long.

Your child could play the game before most other “Dreamers” out there.

Sarah loves beta testing DreamBox Third Grade

One, two, three ways to enter and win an exclusive private beta tester slot for our 3rd grade math games:

1. Comment on this blog post. Introduce yourself, tell us why you want to be one of the first to play third grade, and leave your email address so we can easily contact you if you’re a lucky winner.

2. Leave a note on our Facebook wall.  Stop by and tell us why your child should be one of the first to try third-grade.

3. Tweet about the giveaway using @DreamBox_Learn and tell us why you should win.

One entry per comment, facebook wall message, or tweet. Contest starts Tuesday, February 23. Winners announced on March 5.  To be eligible, you must have already played DreamBox and meet certain other eligibility requirements. So if you haven’t already tried it sign up now for a free DreamBox Learning trial. Don’t miss your chance to be a beta tester for third-grade math!

Now you can download the PDF for the coloring page for one of the favorite Pet Friends stories. Print out this pets math activity coloring page and your kids can “Help Cool Cat Kelly and his pals find the missing mischievous kittens!”

Then you can print out the other math activity coloring pages so your children can:

• Color the Dinosaurs coloring page to “Help Professor Pickles and the gang get home in the time machine!”
• Color the Pixies coloring page to “Help give Snorg a surprise birthday party in the enchanted world of the pixies!”
• Color the Pirates coloring page to “Help Barnacle Beard and the pirates find the map and recover their treasure before the sea monster gets it.”
• And when you print out the Adventure Park coloring page, your kids can make Stella and her friends the colors of the rainbow.

We hope your children have fun with these DreamBox characters! And if you haven’t already, you can sign up to try DreamBox Learning K-2 Math free for 14 days. Children think DreamBox Learning K-2 Math is a fun adventure full of stories, interactive games, and more! Parents know it’s an individualized, effective math game, made highly engaging so children will be motivated to play and learn — it’s serious learning that’s seriously fun!

Get our new kids activity calendar here.

This month, the theme is ‘I Heart Math’, so we provided a few tips to help your kids to love math.

Help your child learn to love math

• Make math fun and fascinating part of everyday life. With a little thought, you can find the math in everything from shopping and cooking, to setting the table, to sorting pairs of socks! Focus on fun math facts and trivia and teach them the stories behind notable mathematicians. This month, take your kids to a math and science museum in your area.
• Even if you struggled with math as a student, don’t let any negative feelings you might have influence your children. If you love math, or at least appreciate how important it is, be sure to communicate that, and your kids will too. Create a positive learning environment and help your child practice math on a regular basis.
• Understand what math concepts your child should be learning at every age. You can learn all about them in the DreamBox Math Growth Chart, which describes math skills that kids should have and includes tips for games and activities that will aid in their development.
• Use math manipulatives!  Manipulatives are designed so that a student can learn a mathematical concept by manipulating it. DreamBox offers virtual manipulatives for kindergartners, first graders and second graders that teachers, homeschoolers, and parents can use free in the classroom or at home.
• Read math storybooks to your child! Check out our picks of the best math storybooks for a few wonderful suggestions.

We hope you enjoy our free Math Activity Calendar. Have a fantastic February!

Not only is he absolutely amazing at mental math, he answered Colbert’s question “Why does math matter? Because Americans have a long tradition of believing that math is hard and boring.”

I imagine Arthur getting in a classroom with children classified at “the bottom of the educational system”. After taking his class those kids would blow away all state standards.

Math Activities to Kick Off the New Year

This year marks the debut of a brand new decade. Your kids counted down the hours and minutes until the clock struck midnight and 2010 officially started – even if they were probably long asleep when it happened. What year will the next decade start and how old will everyone in the family be? How many years will it be before midnight is not after bedtime?

January is Freezing Math Month

Just because we said “adios” to December doesn’t mean winter is over yet. Freezing temperatures, falling snow, and fantastic wintry math games are on their way! Measure the inches of new snow with your kids and calculate how fast it melts. Learn why frost forms on the windows in the winter and draw designs in it with your pinkie or a pencil eraser. January 13 is National Cocoa Day, so stay warm inside with steaming mugs of hot chocolate. See how many marshmallows fit without spilling.

Have a happy New Year with our free January calendar and keep cozy with a month bundled full of fun math activities.

Grand Prize Winner

Valley Preparatory School won $1,000 with their video of “When I Grow Up: VPS Kindergarten 2009”. The judges selected this video based on a combination of  popularity and creativity. It was a tough choice, but this video stood out because the VPS Kindergartners went the extra mile to make their dream come alive. This group of future doctors, teachers, ghostbusters, and jack-o-lantern makers created fantastic props and set pieces to show us all what these kindergarten math students want to be when they grow up. Great job!

Winners of DreamBox Math Classroom Licenses

For many, a love of numbers starts in early elementary school.  Since teachers can inspire big dreams and go above and beyond when it comes to math learning, DreamBox encouraged classrooms to join in on the fun.  Presenting, the winners of our classroom contest:

The Community School: “TCS ES What We Want to Be”

Encompass Northwest : “2009 Dream Video”

Juanita Elementary School: “Juanita Elementary Math”

Winners of 6-Month DreamBox Learning K-2 Math Subscriptions

Five children won 6-month subscriptions to our online math game for kids.  The judges picked these videos based on a combination of  votes and creativity. Here are their titles and “big dreams!”

“Brenden the Magician “

“I want to be an astronaut”

“Logan wants to be a doctor”

“Paige grows up”

“When I grow up I will be a good”

We’d like to express our special thanks to our panel of independent judges, who had the tough job of choosing the winners from among the many creative entries we received. Thank you KidsQuest Children’s Museum!

If Santa was a regular guy, could he pull off such a feat? Just for fun, let’s look at the math behind Christmas magic.

How Many Homes?

How many homes does Santa visit in one night? Assuming Santa only visits children under the age of 18, there are roughly 2 billion children in the world and approximately 15% of those children celebrate Christmas.  At an average rate of 3.5 children per household (with at least one good child in each house), according to the Mathematical Association of America, Santa would have to visit 108,000,000 individual homes.  We guess by the time he finishes his trip, he’s pretty full of sugar cookies.

How Much Time at Each Home?

Taking in all the different time zones and the rotation of the earth and also the logical conclusion that Santa would travel east to west, he would need to make 822.6 visits per second. So for each household that celebrates Christmas, Santa has 1/100^th of a second to park his sleigh on the roof, slide down the chimney (assuming he doesn’t get stuck), fill the stockings, put the presents nicely under the tree (avoiding the barking dog), climb back up the chimney, get in the sleigh, exclaim “On Dasher” and move onto the next house.

But the Science of Santa Claus brings up a different point:

“Based on his advanced knowledge of the theory of relativity, Santa recognizes that time can be stretched like a rubber band, that space can be squeezed like an orange and that light can be bent,” Silverberg says. “Relativity clouds are controllable domains — rips in time — that allow him months to deliver presents while only a few minutes pass on Earth. The presents are truly delivered in a wink of an eye.”

How Many Reindeer?

If Santa hired regular reindeer from a local farm in the North Pole, he’d need a lot more than eight. According to the Mathematics of Santa Clause, if Santa used regular reindeer and they generated about 1 horsepower each, he would need 2 billion reindeer to pull his sleigh. And if the sleigh was hitched two-by-two it would reach from here to the moon and back twenty times.

But according to the  Science of Santa Clause, the reindeer don’t pull a sled full of toys:

His reindeer — don’t actually pull a sleigh loaded down with toys. Instead, each house becomes Santa’s workshop as he utilizes a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys inside the children’s homes.

Santa is high tech!

Track Santa’s Trip

Whether you think it’s magic or Santa is just really, really fast, you can track him with your kids. Find out where Claus is flying this Christmas Eve with the official NORAD Tracks Santa. Since 1955, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is the most trusted source to find updates on Santa’s trek around the world on Christmas Eve.

Have a truly magical holiday season! And don’t forget to ask Santa for a subscription to our online math game. It’s fun, educational, and he wouldn’t even have to carry it on his sleigh full of toys (wink, wink).

To the many students, classes, teachers, and parents, we want to thank all of you for sharing your dreams with our education community. Here are some of the DreamBox video contest highlights that make us laugh, touch our hearts, and make us feel great about the future.

We’ll be announcing the contest winners very soon!

DreamBox “Dream Big” Video Contest Round Up:

Brendon shows off his tricks to become a mathematical magician

Kaylee dreams of “helping kitties, doggies and monkeys as a zookeeper”

This girl looks like she’s going to blast off on her way to becoming an astronaut

Logan wants to be a doctor that delivers babies because “Babies are miracles”

Eithen dreams of having his name in lights when he grows up to be a comedian

Christopher’s big plan is to become a “Racecar drivin’ daddy”

This kid with magical pipes is passing on an Opera career to design affordable supercars

Paige shows off her arabesque as she dreams of becoming a dance teacher

This big dreamer is revving his engine to become a racecar driver

Omar is cutting a rug as he dreams of becoming a hip hop dancing cop

Paige is growing up to be a veterinarian “for she can protect animals… for animals can be alive for a long time”

Emma is cooking up a big dream to become a chef in her own bistro

This little guy is fired up to become a football player when he grows up

Peyton dreams of becoming a teacher when she grows up because she wants to “… Make children smarter and a better person and help them”

This little pirate is dreaming about “X marks the spot, so he can to sail a ship to find buried treasure”

This DreamBox Jedi is dreaming of flying an X-wing fighter to take down those bad guys. Watch out with that lightsaber!

Sophia is dreaming of becoming a butterfly when she grows up. Spread your wings and fly away!

DreamBox “Dream Big” Classroom Video Contest

Juanita Elementary shows us how they will use math in their dream jobs of the future!

• This classroom of big dreamers is full of future ball players, architects and CIA agents!

The TCS Movie Club shows off their green screen skills to highlight:

• Tillie and Blake as awesome actresses
• Tatum on her quest to become a wheeling and dealing real estate agent
• Will isn’t settling to be just a weatherman – he wants to be a meteorologist
• Lane wants to be an artist with a backup plan of becoming a dancer

The Holy Rosary Pre Kindergarten Class is dreamin’ of a great big beautiful tomorrow!

• These kids have what it takes to become doctors, mommies and mermaids.
• Watch out! One little guy might be Spiderman when he grows up.

The Valley Prep Kindergarten class has a future so bright, they need to wear shades!

• Chemists. Dancers. Solders and Ghostbusters. There are no bigger dreams than these.
• Great job: Megan, Nicole, Ignatius, Rishi, Hanna, Isabella, Noah, Madison, Nikita, Aaron, Ayesha, Dawson, Isabel, Reed, Aisha, Matthew, Arya, Elizabeth, Juan Jose and Zaid
• Special thanks to Directors: Mrs. Boyle and Miss Melcher, and Producer: Mrs. Willis

Students choose from 4 math adventure themes (Pirates, Dinosaurs, Pets, or Pixies), each with 8 stories, and hundreds of choices for activities in the online adventures. The pirates are a wacky crew of treasure seekers led by their captain, Barnacle Beard. Several of the Pirates stories were inspired by talking with DreamBox kids about fun stories that they would like to see – one even features a giant Sea Turtle!

Kids who choose the Pirates theme can collect the supplies needed to repair the pirate ship and make it shipshape. They can help keep the whale Doby Mick free by destroying all of Peg Leg Meg’s traps. Or they can gather supplies to make Humungous Gus sneeze out the trapped pirate ship. They can even find the six levers hidden across the island of Atlantis, freeing the pirate ship and sending Atlantis back under the sea!

And when you print out the newest DreamBox pirates math activities coloring page, your kids can color it to “Help Barnacle Beard and the pirates find the map and recover their treasure before the sea monster gets it.”

Once they’re finished, you can print out the other coloring pages so your children can:

• Print the Dinosaurs coloring page, and  “Help Professor Pickles and the gang get home in the time machine!”
• Print the Pixies coloring page to “Help give Snorg a surprise birthday party in the enchanted world of the pixies!”
• And when you print out the Adventure Park coloring page, your kids can make Stella and her friends the colors of the rainbow.

Deck the walls or your refrigerator with our new kids’ activities calendar and fight those winter blahs with goofy holidays and math learning opportunities all month long.

Fun holiday math and resources

Track Santa’s big trip with Norad! Did you know that NORAD will let you track Santa Claus leaving the North Pole to deliver his presents to children around the world?

Teach your kids how to budget for holiday gifts using the money savvy pig.

Ornaments come in all shapes and sizes. Make your own decorations with your kids or check out these dazzling holiday ornaments. DreamBox Tip: Ornaments, especially handmade ones make wonderful gifts for teachers.

Ever wonder what causes those mini-lights to twinkle? Explain to your kids how holiday lights work as you decorate.

We’re excited to kick off this magical month with our new calendar. Come back for holiday math learning tips and jokes all season long!