DreamBox Learning®» Preparing for kindergarten

August is Get Ready for Kindergarten Month

Tracy — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:41:15 +0000

Parents, start your minivans -- August is Get Ready for Kindergarten Month. How do you get your child ready for the beginning of their academic career? How do you prepare yourself for this life-changing transition?

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.

New (Free) Calendars Full of Summer Math Activities

Tracy — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:47:51 +0000

We hope your kids are having fun with our July summer activities calendar! Good news: we now have August and September summer math calendars. Hang these fun printables on the fridge and don't miss the summer's coolest holidays.

Summer math holidays and activities:

August is get ready for kindergarten month! Help prepare your child for kindergarten through the month of August. DreamBox Learning is a great math game for kindergartners because it makes math learning fun, is individualized, and tracks progress. It's a wonderful way to introduce your child to math learning. Our September calendar features delightful holidays like cream-filled doughnut day on September 14 and National Comic Book Day on September 25! These calendars are free and available as part of the parent resources we offer. Print them out and you'll always have math learning activities to do with your kids during the dog days of summer.

Print the DreamBox Dinosaurs Theme Poster!

Cris — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:53:47 +0000

The DreamBox Adventure park is a magical place where kids can choose which adventures they would like to explore. Four themes are available to DreamBox players: Pirates, Pixies, Dinosaurs, and Pet Friends! These themes as well as the stories and adventures that kids explore were inspired by and suggested by kids we've talked to and some of our school beta testers! The DreamBox creative team thanks them all for inspiring us and helping us make a great product. To commemorate our launch we've created four fun posters (one for each theme) for kids and parents to download and print at home.

Check out our Online Learning Game Theme of the Day: Dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs poster PDF The Dinosaurs theme is a time traveling adventure where students join silly professor Pickles, Dr. Kim, Hasan, and Misha as they explore a museum and travel to the time of dinosaurs and back! The Dinosaurs theme was one of the DreamBox kids' favorite ideas from the beginning and we've enjoyed creating a fun world of dino time travel for kids to explore. Download a JPEG or PDF version of this fun poster to print at home! Dinosaurs poster PDF

Preparing for Kindergarten

Sarah — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:50:12 +0000

I took time off from work the other day for a very important occasion with my 5 year old son: a chance to meet his new Kindergarten teacher and classmates, and preview his new classroom! As he met his teacher, made shy “hellos” and “high fives” to the other kids in his class, and looked around, I couldn’t help but think about what he would learn this year, what his big “wins” and big “challenges” would be, and whether we had prepared him well enough. In one corner of the room there is a cozy reading area, with shelves of books and soft big pillows on the floor. Yes, he would like that. We had always cuddled with him on our laps and read stories and adventures and dinosaur books, and today he has a great love of books (though still a non-reader). What might he be able to read by the end of the year? In another area was a magnet board with baskets of letters, numbers and pictures of food. My son immediately created a feast for a king on that board, organized by …um, his own system.

Having Confidence in Math Skills is a Great Head Start

Taped on the back wall was a set of pictures showing the different ways to “make 10” – add 1 to 9, or 2 to 8, etc. and next to it was a shelf full of math manipulatives. Being an early beta tester of DreamBox, he nodded with familiarity at the wall, and picked up a mathrack with confidence. Hooray! I thought. The overlap of my work life and home life had helped give him an early love of math and a good head start. (That certainly wouldn’t have been true if I had stayed in my previous jobs in network security or medical information systems!). And then he ran out to the playground, and was quickly playing loudly with the other kids, glancing my way only occasionally to make sure I was still watching. Yes, he is prepared enough for Kindergarten, ready to start an amazing educational journey that will include academic, social and artistic adventures.