DreamBox Learning®» Educational games

Are You Attending NCTM 2010 in Baltimore, October 14-15?

Tracy H — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:12:48 +0000

Are you attending the NCTM 2010 Regional Conference in Baltimore? If so, make sure you visit DreamBox Learning in booth 322! We'd love to meet you, and you could win some great giveaways for your classroom. Join us in our booth for:

Hourly demos

FREE Teacher Tools

A FREE 30-day classroom trial!

You could win!

Schooled by 5-8 year olds: Make Changes to Student Status that Students Can See

Mickelle — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:31:48 +0000

I’ve talked before about all the beta testing we completed before launching the product to the public. A significant portion of the beta testing took place in schools where the Academic Team (all certified elementary teachers with 75% having earned National Board Certification) could watch kids playing. We watched for signs of confusion and boredom, as well as excitement and learning. We listened carefully to their questions and statements muttered throughout the play. Kindergartners especially are known for talking aloud as they play. On the other hand, second and third graders can more easily express their misconception and "aha: moments.

Making A DreamBox Math Game That Kids Can Really Use

I’ll never forget the day we realized our users didn’t “see” the differences in their game maps. How could they? We’d show them a map with some circular icons glowing, and they would choose one to play. The next time they saw their map, some of the icons were the same and some were different. A check mark indicating a game was successfully played was ignored. We needed to do a better job of telling the student, “Yay! You passed this game. Here are some new games to play.” The next time your child plays DreamBox, watch the map in the Adventure Park closely. When you return to a map, changes take place in front of the user. Lesson icons appear and disappear. Check marks appear. Reward backpacks fall onto the screen. When kids see their progress, it’s more meaningful and engaging. Whew! A minor tweak with huge results. Did we learn our lesson the first time? No! Unfortunately, we repeated this mistake in the Carnival. But rest assured we are currently working to correct this behavior!

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?

For the Love of Yahtzee!

Casey — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:53:06 +0000

I renewed my love of Yahtzee a few months ago, in a little cottage in Hawaii when my husband and I discovered it was the only board game in the place. We were trapped inside at 7pm every night with our three month old baby and spent many hours playing this fun and competitive game. Yahtzee is fast paced, has the chance elements of winning big but also requires strategy. During the long days and nights with an infant it was also perfect because the game plays pretty quickly and can be renewed at any time. Best of all, it’s a game a multi-generational family can play together—helping little ones practice and learn math while still amusing mom, dad, aunts and uncles and grandma and grandpa. Case in point, a Tuesday night of the holiday week, nothing on TV and I am going to go crazy if I have to try to find one more piece to fit in the 2000 piece puzzle on the dining room table. We break out Yahtzee and in no time my niece and nephew (five and six years old) are rolling dice, adding, subtracting, counting up score cards and having a wonderful time.

Yahtzee

How Yahtzee Builds Math Skills

Yahtzee is not only fun but has also been widely described as “quietly educational”. It draws out a competitive spirit—perfect for young boys and their little sisters—as they throw the dice to try to get a full house, a short straight, large straight or three of a kind. Watch them excitedly add up their ‘chance’ score and you know it’s educational. For older kids you can go further with their math skills by asking them to estimate the probabilities of getting various dice combinations and help them strategically assess what their best next move would be. If the game is a little over the heads of your toddlers you can revise the rules to simply play in the order of the scorecard. First everyone should roll to get as many ones as possible (and add them up), then as many twos, and so on. You can also give each person five rolls instead of three for the large straight, short straight and full house. Yahtzee is a great family game, and it does improve math skills. Have your children add up their own dice and scores. And of course put away the calculators! Buy Yahtzee at Amazon.com One other game suggestion for family fun that also requires math: Shut the Box. Six year olds to adults love playing this game. It’s addictive, portable, great for a quick ‘let’s play for 10 minutes while the adults finish catching up’ and a great time—in addition to helping kids practice math.

Shut The Box

Find Shut the Box at Amazon.com.

Have a Little Fun, Practice French and a Little Math

Sue — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:43:00 +0000

On a day when I didn’t really have any time to goof off, I just found more than an hour of free time I didn’t think I had. That’s thanks to the Mostly Mommies blog which recently mentioned GoMaths.ch, a French site with free educational games. My French is pretty basic but since numbers are universal and the games use pretty common conventions, many of them are easy to understand. People who play online games will find many of them familiar. I come across sites with free “educational games” pretty often – so many of them are not places I’d recommend for parents. But I found myself exploring and playing these, and lost all track of time! There are some fun math-related games here – your children won’t learn new math concepts, but there are web versions of many popular puzzles and pattern matching games, memory games, brain teasers, and some of them can give your kids fun ways to practice basic math operations. You’ll find appropriate games for a range of abilities.

Lots of Fun Learning Games for All Ages

I lost 20-30 minutes playing a puzzle game called Five, where you figure out strategies for grouping 5 adjacent balls of the same color as the maze fills up. There’s a charming game called Les Bulles (The Bubbles) where you can choose the operation you want to practice (addition, subtraction, etc.), then pop floating bubbles that equal your target number. In a completely addictive game called Splash Back, you judge the relative sizes of blobs of green liquid, predict which row where you'll pop the most bubbles, and use up your ten drops to grow the blobs, create combinations, and earn more drops. And there are a couple of Magic Circle/Square games where all the sides have to add up to the same number. I could keep going, but you get the idea. This is one site where you probably won’t mind letting your child play, even if you’re generally leery of game sites. If your children happen to be studying French the math will be an added bonus! And now I really can’t put off making dinner any longer. For more being mathematically international, check out World Math Day!

How Families Limit "Screen Time"

Sue — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:07:26 +0000

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.