DreamBox Learning®» childrens learning games

Chutes & Ladders: A Beginner’s Version for 3-5 Year Olds Sorely Needed!

Mickelle — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:57:32 +0000

The box claims this game is appropriate for ages 3+. It’s wrong. There’s just no way. Where do I even begin? There are so many chutes and ladders that it’s difficult to discern each individual box on the game board. It’s also hard for my three-year-old to know if she’s moving towards the right or the left. (The board is a series of switchbacks. Start from the bottom left corner and move across to the right. At the end of the row, move up one row and progress from right to left.) Although there are arrows at the end of every row, this does nothing to help when her piece is in the middle of the row.

Learning Math Through Games: Ideas for Improvement

In short, I want to create my own game board! I’d start with a hundreds chart using the numbers 1-100, with a 1 in top left corner and the numbers 1-10 across the top row. I’d clearly separate each row creating a chute that wrapped from the end of one row to the beginning of the next row. (For example, the first chute would start at the number 10 and end on the number 11.) The skill of wrapping is actually very difficult for kids, and this would have her practicing wrapping with a physical movement. Where would I add the ladders? I'm not sure -- anywhere between rows, but not crossing over the physical spaces of the boxes for each number. I'll bet my three-year-old would like this game much better than the old version. I could even use different dice or various spinners for determining each move. As she gets older, we could return to use the traditional game board. But I need something between now and then. Anyone out there ready to create my beginning version of Chutes & Ladders?

Math in Today’s Everyday Life

Sue — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:19:10 +0000

Every day now driving home and listening to the news, I try, like everyone else I imagine, to wrap my head around the kinds of numbers they’re throwing around. The scale of the numbers is incomprehensible. How meaningful is the difference between a billion and a trillion dollars? The best mental illustration I’ve heard recently—and many have repeated it—is that if you spent a million dollars every day from the day Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spent a trillion dollars. (I love a great headline: see “Numb and number”.) So I was fascinated by a radio interview I heard yesterday with a science writer named K.C. Cole, whose premise is that our brains simply aren’t built to comprehend numbers this large. She talked about our natural tendency to focus on the difference in the number of digits between 2 numbers instead of the effect of multiplication. (OK this was my takeaway—it’s not precisely what she said.) For example 1,000,000 has twice the number of zeroes1,000 has. So our brains might tend to understand it as twice as much, rather than the fact that those 3 extra zeroes multiply the number by 1,000, which makes it quite a bit larger number.

Metapohrs Help us with the Math in our Daily Lives

She also suggested that we can use metaphors to train our brains to better comprehend differences in scale like this. She referenced the old story about doubling the grain of rice on each square of a chessboard, and by the 64th square you’d need more rice than is grown in the whole world. (By the way, we highlighted a cool book to help kids get this idea in a post a while back: One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale). When I got home I looked it up the interview so I could share it. You can read what she actually said on the Marketplace radio show website.

Creating a Children's Product That is "Magic"

Sarah — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:53:42 +0000

I just got back from a great three day "Dust or Magic" conference run by Warren Buckleitner for people who create children's technology products. (The title is a quote from a 17th century philosopher named Matsuo Basho: "An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.") Guided by Warren, about 65 of us viewed products, learned from each other, and discussed best practices to create "magic" products and learning games that use technology to improve children's lives. And yes, we ALL agreed that children should spend most of their time playing with other children and adults, using real things, and going outside! And we also agreed that many -- perhaps the majority? -- of technology toys and online media are "dust". But, and this is an important but, many products use technology in ways that open up new opportunities for children, and let them learn and explore and play in wonderful new ways. These are the products that are "magic"!

What Makes Up a Good Children’s Learning Product?

How can we make interactive media products -- like DreamBox -- "magic"? Here are some of the key ideas I walked away with:

Let the child be the actor. Whenever possible, give the child control of what to do and create. Examples of this range from providing multiple choices for what to do next, to waiting for the child to indicate when its time to move ahead.
Keep it simple. 'Nuf said.
Make it as open-ended as possible. Just as a blank piece of paper or a box of plain LEGOS inspires open-ended imaginative and creative play, make games that use technology as yet another open-ended tool. For example, in the world of math learning, we can create virtual manipulatives that children use and move to build numbers.