Turkey jokes

Asked to write a composition entitled, “What I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving,” little Timothy wrote, “I am thankful that I’m not a turkey.”

Q: Why did the turkey cross the road?
A: It was the chicken’s day off.

Q: Why was the turkey sent to the Principal’s office?
A: He used fowl language!

Turkey math activities

There’s never a holiday from learning! If you’re a math teacher or parent, cook up some educational Thanksgiving activities and math games. Let your kids help you with recipes. Teach them how to measure and have them count out silverware for the guests. If they’re older, ask them to calculate how many pounds of turkey you will need for Thanksgiving dinner. Or have them list their favorite foods: turkey, pumpkin pie, stuffing, and come up with a budget for groceries. Then, give them pretend money and see if they could shop and stay within budget.

Download our free November calendar and fill the month with a cornucopia of cool kids activities.

The first step is to focus on parents’ attitudes toward math, because a parent who brings negativity to the subject will color a child’s perception. I know from first-hand experience what it’s like to leave school with the feeling that I wasn’t good at math. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that math could be interesting for its own sake, not to mention a useful tool in life!

So we encourage parents to ask themselves: What is my attitude toward mathematics? Do I find it interesting? Do I encourage early math learning in the same way that I support early reading? A parent would never say, “I’m not good at reading” because it sends such a negative message. Your feelings—positive or negative—can influence your child’s.

What can parents do to encourage a positive attitude towards math?
Parents can model how a learner behaves. A learner asks questions, is able to revise his thinking, and recognizes that some problems may have more than one answer and may be solved in more than one way.

You can also look for math opportunities in everyday family activities that can make math interesting and challenging for kids. For example, asking “How tall is that building?” presents an interesting problem because it is too tall to measure. But there are ways of reasoning about the height of the building that can be explored. In this situation, helping your child think about what she already knows and how she might use this, develops resourcefulness. Don’t hesitate to share your own ways of thinking about the problem: “You know, I’m six feet tall. How does that information help us think about the height of the building?” You may not get an answer immediately, but you’ve found a way to provoke reasoning!

You can turn this conversation into a game, combining recall of basic facts (What’s 2×6 feet?) with the reasoning ability (How tall is 1 story? And how many stories are there in the building?) to consider different ways to solve the problem. As your child explores problem solving with you, knowing that you’re listening to him, that his ideas are important, and that you’re willing to explore his ideas, you will help him gain confidence and learn to enjoy math.

Flag math and crafts:

Combine math with history by helping the children make a hand print version of the flag.

2001 flag from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School

Materials you’ll need:

1. One poster board per child
2. Red, white and blue tempera paint
3. Sponges or eager children’s hands

Start by painting a blue square at the upper-left corner of the poster board (the square is a little less than ¼ of the poster board, so you may have to do this yourself). Have the children make seven red rows with their hands (you can also make the red hand prints on a separate piece of paper and cut it into strips). Then paste fifty white stars (or dots) in the blue square.

Talk about the following topics:

1. Why there are 50 stars on the flag?
2. How many red and white stripes are there?
3. What does that number represent?

Enjoy these other helpful math activities at Forth of July Activities and USA Math Pages.

Fun math when watching fireworks:

I have always found that fireworks are an attention grabber with many children, and present a wonderful opportunity to explore the mathematics of measurement and timing, as well as touching on some chemistry.  As a great resource to answer your questions,  Nova has a wonderful outline on The Anatomy of a Firework. This is a brilliant way to show that fireworks are closely linked to science and math.

Since we all know that fireworks can be extremely dangerous, we should always leave fireworks to the professionals. Have a happy, safe and math-filled Fourth of July this year!

DreamBox Learning Presents 10 Celebrity Math and Science Geeks

1. Danica McKellar

(The Wonder Years)

Kevin Arnold was infatuated with Winnie the entire run of the hit show, The Wonder Years. If her character was anything like the actress, he should have wooed her with math wizardry. Danica McKellar is not only a former child star, she’s a New York Time best selling author and renowned math teacher. She wrote Math Doesn’t Suck and Kiss My Math, books that encourage middle-school girls to learn math. Winnie might have been whiny, but we love what Danica McKellar is doing for math.

2. Mayim Bialik

(Blossom)

Every young woman remembers the character Blossom’s iconic hat, best friend Six, and cool leather-jacket clad boyfriend. But few realize Mayim Bialik, the star of the 80’s sitcom would go on to get a Ph.D. in neuroscience at UCLA. Her dissertation was an investigation of Prader-Willi syndrome. Talk about an overachiever!

3. Lisa Kudrow

(Friends)

She played a spacey musician on the hit show “Friends”, but Lisa Kudrow is incredibly smart. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in biology. And she briefly dated Harvard graduate and fellow celebrity geek Conan O’Brien.

4. Huey Lewis

(Musician)

Before Huey Lewis was with “The News,” he got a perfect score of 800 on the math portion of the SAT and studied engineering at Cornell. However, he dropped out after his junior year to continue studying music.

5. Montel Williams

(Talk show host)

Don’t mess with Montel! The award-winning talk show host and former Marine studied Mandarin and graduated with a degree in general engineering with a minor in international security affairs. After graduation, he was selected as a special duty officer specializing in cryptology. Who knew?

6. Terrence Howard

(Hustle & Flow, Iron Man)

No one would suspect that beneath his tough exterior, Terrence Howard is a science geek. He has a chemical engineering degree from Pratt University and desires a doctorate in physics. When asked, Howard effortlessly explains wave-particle theory and the law of entanglement. Howard definitely doesn’t fit the pocket-protector-wearing math geek stereotype.

7. Dr. Dan Grimaldi

(The Sopranos)

He played mobster twins Philly and Patsy Parisi in “the Sopranos”, but his one true love is math. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s degree in operations research from New York University, and a Ph.D. in data processing. He teaches in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. With his mobster mystique, we’re sure he has no problem getting students to turn in their homework.

8. Art Garfunkel

(Musician)

Can Garfunkel add anything else to his long list of interests? He’s a Grammy award winning musician, as well as a poet, and actor, but he’s also a math geek! He holds a master’s degree in mathematics from Columbia and his brother, Jerome Garfunkel was the former member of the America and International Committees that wrote the specification for the COBOL programming language.

9. Cindy Crawford

(Actress and supermodel)

The super model is also super smart! Cindy Crawford was her high school Valedictorian. She received a full-ride scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University. After one quarter, she dropped out to model full time, but she could have had a fabulous, albeit less glamorous, science career.

10. Tom Hanks

(Oscar award winning actor)

He’s an academy award winning actor, but all he really wanted to be was an astronaut. Hanks is on the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. He wanted to join the astronaut program but we’re pretty sure he was meant to be an actor. And hey, he got to play an astronaut in Apollo 13.

Now, whenever your kids complain about their math homework, tell them that even cool celebrities study math and science!

Lisa Kudrow image courtesy of thebuibrothers.com

I can remember making “trains” with upright dominoes as a child.  It took a long time to set them up just right, but then it was so much fun to watch them falling into each other so quickly! It was kind of like watching a tiny roller coaster in motion. Little did I know, though, that playing around like that was actually helping me to develop important spatial skills! It’s important to remember that children learn a lot through play, including how to be creative.

Children love “hands-on” learning, and manipulating objects like these dominoes is not only great for improving fine motor skills, but it can also make it easier for them to understand important math concepts.

Children between the ages of 4 and 6 are just beginning to understand addition. The dots on the dominoes make them the perfect tool for beginners. While 4 year olds will enjoy simply counting up the dots and matching up the ones with the same number of them, 5 year olds can begin to make simple equations with the dominoes.

For example, you can ask your child how many ways he can add to five. Let him have fun showing you which dominoes add up to 5.  If your child already understands what a “+” and “=” sign is, you can also ask her to write the equations that add up to 5:

4 + 1 = 5        2 + 3 = 5        5 + 0 = 5

Then, have your child turn them around to get:

1 + 4 = 5        3 + 2 = 5        0 + 5 = 5

A great book to go along with this activity is called Domino Addition, by Lynette Long, Ph.D. The same process can later be used to reinforce the operations of subtraction and multiplication as well.

People from around the world have been playing all kinds of games with dominoes for many centuries. If you’d like to learn how to play them, and learn a little bit about culture and geography along the way, a great picture book is called Dominoes Around the World, by Mary D. Lankford.

Children of all ages can learn important math and social skills through games played not only with dominoes, but with dice and cards as well. Board games and card games, such as Uno, make number recognition and other math concepts fun to learn, and children can also learn so much about the importance of cooperation and taking turns by playing math games regularly.

How has your child learned math through play?

The genesis of how DreamBox does assessment, and one of the reasons I am with the company, occurred over 30 years ago when one of my relatives was diagnosed with a learning disability.

This surprised us and shocked his teachers, who considered him to be in the upper middle to top third of the class for math. His test scores consistently supported this. In many areas he was significantly ahead of his peers. Yet a detailed examination with an expert showed that for him division just didn’t compute. Put another way, his brain simply wasn’t “wired for division”.

What does this mean? Well, you could ask him something like “If there are four children and each one has three oranges, how many oranges are there in total?” and you’d get the correct answer every time. If you instead asked “If I have twelve oranges and am going to give an equal number to each of four children, how many does each child get?” you might just as easily get an answer like “seven?” or “six” as “three”.

How had all the very good teachers at a very good school missed this through most of primary school? As it turns out, for a lot of years you can do pretty well at math tests if you get close to 100% of all the questions correct that don’t involve division. Or if the teacher only removes a few points for the “one little mistake” you made in the division part of a problem. Or if you have developed strategies to compensate that often approximate the correct answer, without understanding what you were doing.

The simple fact was that no-one over the years tracked the specific type of problems that caused difficulties for this student. And – this being a traditional “English” school – most teachers were more interested with how many answers were correct than how those answers were obtained.

DreamBox Learning Personalizes Online Math Education

So when we started working on what became DreamBox math I wanted to develop a system that would analyze each action the student took as they made it and respond accordingly, adapting automatically to provide the structured support each student needs as they need it. I also wanted a system that could provide specific feedback to parents and teachers identifying not only areas of strength but also weakness. It didn’t take long to realize that a system that adapts like this would work for all ages and skill levels.

DreamBox Learning K-2 Math is our first small step towards this goal and by all accounts is helping children across the spectrum learn math. Though specifically designed for home use, this version is already in use in over 800 schools and is proving particularly valuable for teachers of remedial math.

No child should struggle with math because a learning problem goes undiagnosed and unaddressed. However, recent studies (such as that by the Education Trust that detail how some teachers “are just one chapter ahead of their students”) show that in some communities this is unfortunately not only possible, but likely.

So I am personally looking forward to working on a more school-oriented version of DreamBox, and to the day when DreamBox math is a valuable tool in every teacher’s toolbox for ensuring each of their students is successful at math, no matter what difficulties they may face.

Oh, and how did things turn out for my relative? Things were tough for him for a while. Eventually he became a spreadsheet guru and has created inventory and financial management systems for corporations in the U.S. and overseas.

Turn down the heat and warm up for Math Awareness Month with a few thought-provoking activities your family can do together. Today’s topic: Reducing Carbon Dioxide.

Change a light. Replace one light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb and you’ll save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide (Co2) per year. Math Practice: Count all the light bulbs in your home. Discuss how much energy you’ll save if you replaced each bulb with a compact fluorescent.

Recycle. If you recycle half your household waste, you can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Math Practice: Separate all the aluminum cans, newspapers, and milk cartons in your home. Count how many items make up each pile and tally in a chart. Make pencil holders out of aluminum cans. Subtract the cans you’re reusing from the cans in the pile. Now how many cans will go into the recycle bin?

Every step you take. For every mile you travel by car, you let one pound of Co2 into the air. Math Practice: Take a family bike ride and count the blocks as you go along. How many blocks make up a mile in your town? Could you take more trips by bike or on foot? List the animals you see on your journey and collect fallen leaves.

Math Learning As A Way of Teaching Your Child About the Environment

It’s amazing how much a simple action, like changing a light bulb impacts our environment. While we talk with kids about climate change and conservation, math provides real values behind our decisions. When a child asks, “Mommy, why can’t we take the car?,” instead of using the old Mommy mantra “Because I said so,” say, “If we drive one mile, we’ll let one pound of carbon dioxide into the air. Let’s walk instead.”

Teach your kids about Math and the Climate with more fun Earth Day activities. Comment below and let us know if you’re participating in Math Awareness Month!

Early on we learned that our curriculum is challenging. Appropriately challenging, but nonetheless challenging. This made it difficult for new users that weren’t as familiar with computer games, weren’t comfortable using computers for learning, and weren’t confident when using virtual manipulatives for solving problems. There was too much new learning taking place at once. What should we do?

How Can Users Get the Most Out Of DreamBox Online Math Learning?

We, the Academic Team at DreamBox, experimented with the starting place of our curriculum and looked at some general patterns in user data. We found that a majority of new users failed the early lessons and our dynamic sequencing was taking them to lessons in a previous grade-level. This bothered us. As teachers we wanted our students to experience success with math early in the product use. Would it be better if we started kids off with easy math games and gradually increased the difficulty? The answer: Yes! By starting with curriculum one grade-level earlier in the sequencing, the new user experienced success with math and this compensated for frustrations that naturally occurred due to using a new learning medium.

But isn’t starting users one grade-level behind inefficient? With most products, this would be the case, but not so with ours. Our GuideRight™ Technology allows us to skip over large chunks of the curriculum when the student demonstrates that the math is easy. Our unique sequencing allows a child to work in two grade levels of the curriculum at once.

After a few successful kindergarten games, users are presented with our early first-grade curriculum. If they aren’t, it means they weren’t ready for it. This may not be the perfect solution for all kids, but it turns out that it works successfully for the majority of our kindergarten to 3rd grade students. However, as always, we’re anxious to hear from the parents of our little DreamBox users: how is this working for your children?

Show Your Child that Learning Math can be Fun

• Answer a question with a question. Child: “What am I supposed to do here?” Parent: “What do you think you should do here?” or “Is there anything here that will give you help?” When your child is able to answer a question on her own, let her know. “Wow! I’m impressed. Did you know you already knew the answer?” (Note: In DreamBox, we provide different levels of instructions in most games. Click Help once to receive a quick recap of the instructions. Click Help again and you’ll receive more detailed, explicit directions. Teach your child about this feature.)
• Latency – wait for your child to respond. Often we (parents and teachers) start answering our own questions before a child has had an adequate amount of think time. Give your child the think time she needs. If you don’t, your child learns that by waiting a little while, you’ll answer the question and provide more help, whether she needs it or not. When teaching, I taught myself to wait for over a minute for some responses. This feels like an incredible amount of time, but it’s the amount of time that some kids need to consider a problem and respond to it.
• Don’t hover. Are you a “helicopter” parent? Do you swoop in and rescue your child at the first sign of a struggle? If this sounds like you, put some distance between your child and her struggles. I’d also suggest reading one of the books in the Love & Logic series.
• Be present, but not attentive. Some kids are comforted just knowing a helping hand is available. Sit nearby with a book. Eventually walk away for 2 minutes, then 5. Whenever I introduce a new computer game to my daughter, I’m always nearby for the initial experience. As she gets familiar with the game, I decrease my attention and proximity to her.
• Don’t be present. Some kids are willing to experiment more and make mistakes when a parent or sibling isn’t around. Basically, they don’t want to make mistakes in front of anyone. Let them. Provide earphones so you don’t hear every wrong answer.
• Model behavior by sharing your struggles. Let your child know that you have to solve hard problems too. Talk about this. Let her know how good it feels when you’ve finally completed a difficult task through hard work and perseverance. Also, let her know when you almost gave up but didn’t.
• Limit the time spent on one activity. Some kids have a hard time self-regulating how much is too much. They start to break down when an activity has lasted too hard. Stop the activity and refocus your child’s attention.
• Think out loud. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t help your child. Of course you should. Just make sure you’re giving the right kind of help. Try to verbally express what you’re thinking as you help your child. Share even the smallest details. Two fabulous books are this are Comprehending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6 by Arthur Hyde and Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis.

Have you figured out that this isn’t just a problem in math? It’s a problem that must be addressed in every subject, including social time. Use these same strategies to help your child solve problems with a playmate, when reading a new book or putting together a new Lego set.

Instead, did I spend the first weeks of school assessing these particular objectives to determine the appropriate starting point for each student? Ideally, yes. But what teacher has of time? Remember, I can spend as much time planning and preparing for my students as I want, but it’s much more difficult to increase the actual instruction time I have with them. Instruction time is a valuable commodity and it’s important to use it wisely. Assessment is an important part of using instruction time wisely, but how much time should I spend assessing supplementary software?

Using Software to Better Gauge Kindergarten through Second Grade Math Curriculums

Although I hate to admit this, I’d usually make my best guess for a starting place. Reflecting back on this, I’d usually include too many objectives which didn’t challenge the students early enough, and resulted in my students not wanting to use the software. Or maybe the software just wasn’t engaging enough.

This prior experience had a dramatic impact on DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. I didn’t want to burden teachers and parents with this same requirement. We (teachers, developers and our wonderful assessment advisor) spent hours developing an assessment model that allows our software to dynamically adjust and provide just the right curriculum for each individual. As a result there are over a million paths through our curriculum. While I can’t tell you exactly how we do this (it’s part of our secret sauce!), I can tell you this is ground-breaking work. We’ve built something I haven’t seen any other product emulate. And to have my name associated with the patent — well, that’s just too cool!

So I attacked Candy Land differently. I put aside the traditional cards with one or two colors indicating if one should move 1 red space or 2 yellow spaces, and introduced a squishy yellow die with dots representing the numbers 1 to 6. Elle thought the die was fun. Little did she know she was practicing the early math skill of recognizing dot patterns (or quick images) up to 6.

Try this with your own child. It’s truly surprising how quickly they roll and say, “five” or “four” without counting each dot on the die. With every roll, she also had to move that many spaces. This isn’t so easy for a 3-year old that doesn’t quite have one-to-one tagging down. She counts as she moves, but she doesn’t always move exactly one space for each number counted. So, when appropriate, I’d help her move or point to each space as we counted together. On my turns (when she wasn’t moving my piece for me), I’d model making my piece jump one space for each number counted. Elle absolutely loved playing the game this way, and I loved turning this into an opportunity to watch and learn from her. As a teacher, I was challenged to keep the experience light-hearted yet below her frustration level. As a mom, I just had fun teasing and laughing along with Elle.

The Challenges of Math Education for Your Child: Making Learning Fun

Other variations for using Candy Land with 3-6 year olds: I know Elle won’t be entertained by this forever, and I’ll want to challenge her more as she grows. Here are some twists I’ll use in the future. (Am I actually looking forward to playing more Candy Land?):

• Change the die used. Use a die with numerals 1-6; or better yet, 1-10, 1-12 or 1-20. As a teacher, I have a collection of these. Dice are cheap. Make the investment.
• Rotate picking a card with picking a die. The traditional cards make the game move a lot faster, unless you get sent back to the beginning!
• Roll two dice. Start with two dice, each using dot patterns. Then, combine one die with a dot pattern and one using numerals. Finally, use two dice with numerals. This introduces adding to the game.
• Roll two dice. Choose one to move. This adds strategy to this traditional game of chance.
• Pick a card and a die (for a slightly older child). Let your child decide if she should use the card first or the die first. Again, this adds strategy to the game.
• Let your child choose if she wants to use a die or the cards. Then, use the opposite. What happens? Does your child think one choice is better than the other? Why? Is one scarier or riskier? Why?

By helping my son through problems that may be challenging for him, I am not allowing the program to work as designed. The GuideRight™ technology adapts the lessons depending on the students responses to each problem. Even helping with a few questions could quickly put him in lessons that are over his head.

Learning Math the DreamBox Way

So, how do I avoid helping too much? I’ve set him up to be as independent as possible. When he wants to play DreamBox, he clicks the icon on the desktop and he signs in to his account. I sit in a chair close enough to see the screen but not close enough to touch the computer. I always have either a book or the newspaper to read. This helps set the tone for independence.

And then I listen. I listen for what games he is choosing. I listen for whether he is getting answers correct or incorrect. I listen for his reactions.

I try not to react the first time he says something. But I do take note of what he says, what lesson he is working on and where he is at in the lesson. If he is at the beginning of a lesson, he often just needs help understanding the directions. This is where the Help Button is useful. My son loves reminder rhymes, so we came up with “Clicking twice is nice.” When he asks for help, I remind him that “Clicking twice is nice” and he checks the help before asking me. This has also helped me to not just jump in but to let DreamBox do its job.

If he continues to complain about something, I start to evaluate what is going on. I’ve had a couple AHA moments. One is that there are a multitude of reasons for him to whine or complain while playing DreamBox and many have nothing to do with the program! He often likes to play when we get home at the end of a long day. At first this seemed great; he can play while I make dinner. But nope! I’ve found he is tired, hungry and cranky. He has also asked to play first thing in the morning. Again, this seemed like a good time to play. But nope! He is not a morning person. He wakes up hungry and cranky. I’ve found the best time for him to play is right after lunch or dinner.

Because he is a preschooler, there are times when he gets a lesson that challenges him. He doesn’t like to be wrong and often grumbles when he gets something incorrect. If I continue to hear grumblings on a particular game, I talk to him about what is frustrating him. Sometimes he just needs me to restate the directions. Other times I need to encourage him to take a break from the lesson map and try some of the carnival games.

And yes, sometimes I realize he’s four and I’ve let him play WAY too long and he needs to log off the computer!

1. Have students think about a number that they like, maybe their favorite number. They should create a card with this number displayed prominently on it. For primary classrooms, it might be handy to have giant numbers to trace onto red paper. Their writing can go anywhere on the number. Older students will invariably come up with a way to make the number pop out on the front.
2. Students should write a little letter telling why that number is special to him/her. It would help to elaborate on what its uses are, mathematically speaking, and reasons why that number was picked. Students can write all the ways to make that number on the front, with any mathematical expression they can come up with that equals that number.
3. Decorate and discuss. Allow a little time for some fun decorating. Doilies are basic V-day décor, but crayons work great too. It is always important for students to share with others about their work. Save time and have each child share one thing about their number as you staple each valentine up on the bulletin board.

Here’s a Valentine’s Day Math example

(It gets a little cheesy, but this helps the kids to see the fun in it!)

Happy Valentine’s day number 9,
I really like you. You are my favorite number. ‘NINE’ has 4 letters in it just like my name, Beth! I like that you’re 3 x 3, since 3 used to be a favorite number of mine when I was little. Now I’m older, so I’m just as happy with bigger numbers like you. I also like that you look like a 6 upside down. You’re the square root of 81 and you make really cool number patterns on a hundreds chart when you’re multiplied by other numbers. You’re also the largest single digit that I know. Happy Valentine’s Day, number 9!

Sincerely,
Beth

His comments highlight one of our big challenges at DreamBox communicating how different DreamBox is from other products people are familiar with and this seems like a good forum to discuss it! Because we offer a web service instead of a CD or software that downloads to your desktop, DreamBox is able to customize every aspect of the experience to your child’s specific actions in the game and learning needs.

A Math Game that Adapts Dynamically

A CD starts every child at the same point, and they all work through the same lessons in the same sequence, progressing to the next level if they’ve passed them all some children will be successful with this model while others will quickly become either overwhelmed or bored. By contrast, DreamBox places children in the curriculum so they skip the material they already know, begins them where they’re ready to learn, and constantly adjusts everything from the hints and instructional feedback, the pacing and sequence, level of difficulty and more. So each child is always challenged at just the right level, it holds their interest and they can go much further.

Furthermore, learning doesn’t happen in a linear way, and kids really benefit from the opportunity to explore and learn with more self-directed freedom than the typical school curriculum allows. So kids may be in several different parts of the curriculum concurrently and in fact most kids will be learning material from more than 1 grade at any given time. They may be ahead in number sense but still practicing in the computation area of the curriculum. And parents can see this as they follow  what their children are learning in the parent dashboard and through the progress report emails that we send.

So it really is highly individualized learning our customers are buying, a service, not simply a static set of lessons or a piece of software!

However, like Vitamin A, a lot more is not better. To take an extreme, a child playing 3 hours a day every day is crowding out too many other activities for a happy child.

So what is the “right” amount of time for your child? And more importantly, given that the answer varies from child to child, and even week to week for the same child, how do you tell when your child has had the right amount of time? What advice do you have for other parents on scheduling time for DreamBox play?