Prepping for the first school send off

We’ve all seen those movies and T.V. shows where the child clings to his parent’s leg, weeping and refusing to go inside the kindergarten classroom.  There are a few things you can do now to quell your child’s fear and ease him through those big, scary doors.  Read him books about kindergarten, such as The Night Before Kindergarten or First Day Jitters and gently get him familiar with the concept.  Storytime is a good way to get your child talking about the new school.

Take a walk by the school, play on the playground, and maybe take him inside for a special tour.  Adjust his sleep schedule gradually to the school’s schedule.  And if your child is going to take the bus, take a practice trip on the school bus or point out (and count!) buses you see on the road.

Kindergarten math

Math can be integrated into many daily activities.  You can start prepping your child for kindergarten with kindergarten-appropriate math games like Uno and number Bingo. Practice counting by asking your child to count the buttons on your shirt, the daisies in your lawn,  the candy in a dish.  Use our Math Development Growth Chart and find out where your five-year-old is in math before school begins.

How do parents get ready?

August summer math calendar

Kids are the ones who have to face a whole new routine, but parents need to prepare too! During the school send off, you’ll probably cry more than the little one.  Invest in a giant pair of sunglasses to hide those tears.  And definitely have a video camera handy.  Questions to ask yourself before your child begins kindergarten:

• What forms do you need to fill out?
• Do you have a kindergarten yearly calendar and daily schedule?
• What are the procedures for getting your child to/from school?
• What immunizations are required for school entry?
• How do you register?
• What’s the principal’s name and the name of the kindergarten teachers?
• What is the policy for school snacks and lunches?

A new month means a new calendar, so don’t forget to download our August activity calendar.  Have a wonderful and stress-free Get Ready for Kindergarten Month! Feel free to comment if you’ve been through it before and want other parents to know what it’s like.

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!

Reigniting the math learning debate

This sparked a follow-up — someone else shared the TED conference video “Don’t eat the marshmallow yet!” In it Joachim de Posada describes a well-known experiment on delayed gratification and how self-control can predict future success. It’s worth a watch, even aside from the video of adorable kids trying their hardest not to eat a marshmallow!

TED Conference talk: “Don’t eat the marshmallow yet”

With so much cultural emphasis on instant gratification — peer pressure to have/wear the trendy thing, media exposure to a huge number of ad messages, easy credit (well, maybe it’s a little less easy now) — it’s no wonder we all feel the pressure to have it all and have it now. How can parents teach self discipline, control, and patience in this environment? (Research suggests that many parents feel this is an area they haven’t done well with.) Smarter folks than I have wondered this too, so I went looking for a good resource on this topic. Now it’s my turn to share: here’s a great article on Parenthood.com: “How to Teach Kids Self-Discipline.” There’s plenty of insightful, common sense advice, plus a few other good resources if you want to learn more.

Fortunately in our case, there was no single test to worry about. A second source of stress can come from worrying about how a placement decision will affect the child’s distant future. For a middle-schooler, college and life after college is a long way off. This actually makes the decision easier, as the only criteria is: What is in best interest of the child now? Where can the child have the right balance of challenge and success? That still might not be easy to figure out, but it is a whole lot easier than worrying about whether your daughter won’t be CEO someday because she didn’t take honor’s algebra in middle school.

Math Honors: Coping With Unexpected Stress

So how did our daughter’s case work out? Well, she initially wanted one direction. Her parents and teacher after talking with each other, thought a different course was best. And at least for a while longer, it is clear who has final say. If you have had to face a placement decision, how did your family handle it?

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.

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. One player names categories and the other player sorts the cards. Take turns with each role.
2. One player sorts the cards (but keeps the categories a secret!) and the other player tries to guess the categories they used. Take turns with each role.

Category ideas:
• Colors
• Specific words or phrases (such as “Be Mine!” or “Friend”)—this is especially fun for early readers
• Shape of the actual valentine
• Size

The Value of Playing Math Learning Games with your Children

This kind of activity can be done with lots of objects (shapes, toys, coins, stamps, or just about any other collection you can think of). It provides opportunities for sorting, classifying, and comparing, which support the development of patterning skills. Be prepared to have lively discussions about Valentines that fit into more than one category or none of the existing categories! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Another fun classroom math activity is coming up on March 4th: World Math Day. Be sure to check it out!

When studios first started working in what was the “new” medium of animation, they designed very homogeneous casts when it came to depicting humans. It was rare to have any character (especially main characters) deviate from a particular ethnic palette or body profile. When racial groups were included in cartoons, they were mostly unflattering and offensive portrayals. For decades, that’s how it was. Then during the 60’s to the 80’s when television made cartoons more accessible to a wider audience, well-intended attempts were made to introduce more positive depictions of ethnic characters. Examples include Haji from Johnny Quest, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, Fat Albert, and Bravestarr among others. Perhaps the most diverse and progressive cartoon cast on TV during this period was the team from the GI Joe cartoon series in the 80s which went as far to include characters that were Eskimo, Samoan, and people of mixed heritage. The show even addressed interracial relationships. Though progress was slowly being made on the television, it wasn’t until 1992 when Disney, arguably the most influential force on character design for animation, released Aladdin and broke from its traditional formula of European-based fairy tale heroes and signaled a shift in corporate thinking regarding what a protagonist should look like in animation. In 2001 the idea of the skinny, pretty princess was challenged by the movie version of Shrek by Dreamworks. And in 2003, Pixar introduced a tale about a single parent of a child with a disability in Finding Nemo, injecting two topics that family cartoons don’t usually tackle. These are positive changes that are relatively recent and ongoing in an industry where long held beliefs of sticking to formulaic plots and characters have dominated the culture throughout the 20th century.

Continuing to Break the Mold in Kid’s Games

The DreamBox art team continues in this tradition of change and progress when it comes to our own animated creations. We share the concerns of the parent who wrote us and we are proud of the diversity of the characters we’ve started with. The writer’s approval of our avatar designs shows that we are beginning on the right path. As an artist at DreamBox, I approach my character creations and stories knowing how important of having positive depictions of people from a wide variety of backgrounds is to all children. When you take into account that online programs such as ours are accessible to every person on the planet with an internet connection, the importance of having a diverse range of characters isn’t just an ideal to strive for but a fundamental element of design.

As the DreamBox universe continues to grow and develop, we look forward to introducing an even greater spectrum of characters. It is our hope that it will allow kids from all walks of life feel more included in the DreamBox world and help them engage with the lessons more comfortably.

DreamBox Learning K-2 Math Beta

We had about 30 children in the DreamBox office over the last few weeks, beta testing the upcoming version of our online math learning games – DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. I had the opportunity to talk with their parents about computer usage at home, and got to hear first hand how concerned parents are about the time their children spend in front of the TV, computer, and video games. The overwhelming majority limit their children’s “screen time.”

How Much Screen Time Should Kids Have Per Day?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents limit screen time to no more than two hours per day including television, videos/DVDs, computers, and video games. (About.com has listed some practical tips on how to limit your child’s video game time in compliance with this recommendation.) But almost all of the parents I spoke to felt it should be much more limited than that. I heard that for these families, on average, most kids play on the computer 3 to 4 times a week, for about 20-40 minutes at a time. And in a sign of how self-directed and computer savvy kids are at a young age, most said their child is initiating computer play and very often deciding what sites to visit and what activities they want to do. In some cases, parents allow more computer time for educational activities – which I took as good news for the future of DreamBox Learning K-2 Math!

For more see our post on filling that screen time with healthy programs and games for kids.

While he didn’t watch much TV when he was young, my son loved Disney radio which was constantly promoting Disney shows, so I’d try to raise his consciousness about the difference between the program and the advertising. According to Consumer Reports magazine, it’s a developmental issue: “young children have difficulty distinguishing between advertising and reality in ads, and ads can distort their view of the world.” (There’s a good article about this on the Media Awareness Network site.) That’s why Sweden and Quebec have banned advertising aimed at pre-teen kids.

It’s astonishing how many entertainment and learning game sites there are for kids as young as 2 or 3 – even for babies! There are countless ad-supported sites that offer educational games and fun activities. On these sites parents can at easily point out the difference between the links in the “Ads by Google” sidebar and the activity links.

Determining the Serious Learning Games from the Advertisements

But it’s getting harder to distinguish between the ad and the content. Advertisers are developing online programming to promote their products outside of traditional advertising formats. Teletubbies, Lego, and hundreds of other products aimed at young children are building online activity sites as a way to promote their brand. Nick Jr. has been very successful building the Nickelodeon brand and viewership through “learning games” and online activities with its TV characters like Dora and Blues Clues. Even the respected education brand PBS has jumped on the bandwagon with PBS Kids, promoting Barney and other shows.

Soon, DreamBox will offer serious math learning in the form of online adventure games for kids as young as kindergarten. So we’re not unbiased as we look at other products that have educational value. But on another level, we’re passionate about giving parents an effective way to help their kids learn math that’s just as fun, without the consumerism promoted in so many of these choices.

Look Mom! No ads, just games!

The children know.
They have always known.
But we choose to think otherwise: it hurts to know the children know.
If we obfuscate, they will not see.
Thus we conspire to keep them from knowing and seeing.
And if we insist, then the children, to please us, will make believe they do not know, they do not see.
They are remarkable–patient, loving, and all-forgiving.
It is a sad comedy: the children knowing and pretending they don’t know to protect us from knowing they know.

– Maurice Sendak, preface to I Dream of Peace (UNICEF, HarperCollins l994)

I am the second of two children in my family, and my mother is definitely one those parents who try to make their kids geniuses when they’re young. As a second child I was lucky, because most of this parental ambition was poured over my brother; by contrast, I was not reading large books or doing well in math before first grade. I really did have a lot more freedom than my brother to choose what I was interested in. At first, my parents thought that I was going to be good at literature, because I had the ability to talk for hours if there was someone around unlucky enough to listen.

Growing up in Bulgaria math is stressed in school, and from the beginning we had many math problems to solve every day. As time went on, I started to like math and many of my friends also liked it. I attended extra math and informatics programs in the Math High School in my city. I found math to be fun on my own, without being pushed so hard like my brother was.

Encouraging Kids Through Fun Learning Games and Imagination

Now, I am a silver medalist from the International Olympiad in Informatics, a Computer Science graduate, and a software developer for an online children’s education start-up. I have been seriously studying math for around 10 years, and I really enjoy it! In spite of the fact that I haven’t been solving linear equations since the age of 5 .

The bottom line that I want to emphasize is: let’s keep learning fun for younger kids. Childhood should be a time of exploration and discovery. And what could be better than to combine fun with serious learning? This is what we’re doing here at DreamBox, and every time I see a child enjoy our product, I am happy for at least two reasons: this child is having fun and he/she is also learning something useful. I wish my mother had this product when I was a child…

Fun Math Game

Pumpkin math games and other fall activities

Here are some other fun ways to combine math and the pumpkin season.

Pumpkin math, literally

1. Get the book “How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin” by Margaret Mcnamara and follow along.
2. Find out if a pumpkin floats and why, or why not. What about a really large pumpkin? You’d be surprised.
3. Wrap a string around a pumpkin and guess the size. For extra credit figure out the diameter (hint: 3.14 x diameter = circumference).
4. Follow some of the fun fall activities at Math Cats.

Share your ideas for pumpkin math games and fall activities by posting your comments below.

How many seeds in a pumpkin?, by Margaret McNamara

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

This book shows how one class predicted and counted the number of seeds inside different sized pumpkins. They found that size didn’t necessarily determine the number of seeds inside. Time on the vine, number of ribs, and color all play a role in the number of seeds inside a pumpkin.

Finally, they’re ready to explore the insides of a pumpkin, count the seeds, and see if their predictions are accurate. By using the counting techniques shared in the story, the students begin to explore which techniques for counting are efficient. In the story, as well as in class, the students begin to recognize that counting by 4’s is not as efficient as counting by 10’s when dealing with large numbers. It can also be fun to chart the number of ribs, color, and the number of seeds for all the pumpkins in the class to see if a pattern arises. Looking at data that was self-created is more likely to give kids have those ‘aha’ moments. It is an excellent way to help them realize that math and nature are closely linked!

If you like these pumpkin math problems, check out our 2009 Pumpkin Math Activities Calendar.

Most, if not all, of the parents I know have implemented a “screen time” limit for their kids, where screen time includes watching TV or movies, and playing games on the computer or handhelds. Most parents also want to make sure these screen time choices are age-appropriate, but find it difficult to really know which TV shows or movies are “healthy” and which are “junk food”.

Knowing What Games and Programs are Healthy Screen Time for Kids

Lisa’s book Into the Minds of Babes was an eye-opener to me about the available research on what makes a TV show or a computer game healthy or not, and what children can learn from them. I recommend to it all parents. It influenced how I choose what my two young sons are watching and doing at home.

Her point of view has been influential here at DreamBox Learning too. For example, learning about the the intensive testing that Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues have done to understand how their shows impact kids has led us to do even more testing of our product. Our goals are very much in the spirit Lisa describes – to make our product “healthy” screen time, helping kids learn real math and have fun doing it, so that parents will offer it to their children on a regular basis without viewing it as “junk food for the brain.”