What's Your Edu-Parent Style? Learn How Your Style Helps Your Child.

Parents can get lots of help understanding their parenting style — the way they raise and interact with their children. Because parenting styles can influence our children's development and behavior many parents want to learn about their own style, and there are probably thousands of articles and books published on the subject. Parents often try to make conscious choices about their parenting style, always aiming to become more effective and raise responsible, independent, happy children.

At DreamBox we recognize how hard parents work to help their children learn, and even more importantly, to grow up loving the process of learning. So we've worked with a group of recognized educators — experts on parent education with over 30 years of community leadership — to co-author The DreamBox Edu-Parent Quiz.

The DreamBox Edu-Parent Quiz is designed to help parents assess the style with which they interact and engage with their kids on variety of educational topics. The authors have identified a range of edu-parent styles. There's no right or wrong style — each offers benefits and presents unique challenges. It is valuable, therefore, to recognize your style and be conscious of ways to use it most effectively! The five different styles that our experts have identified are:

• The Coach
  Coaches expect their children to always do their personal best and become successful learners. They steer them towards situations that play to their learning strengths. The feedback coaches give helps their children course-correct, and learn from any experience.
• The Historian
  Historians share knowledge and confidence born out of experience. They want kids to understand and benefit from valuable lessons they have learned. Historians take time to explain how to complete tasks and projects, and show their children how to take proven and effective approaches in their life.
• The Mentor
  Mentors are focused on preparing their children for life-long learning. They listen and guide with questions, often providing decision-making opportunities. By modeling independent problem solving, Mentors hope their children become independent learners and thinkers in their own right.
• The Observer
  Believing that children learn from their experiences, and with a high tolerance for mistakes, Observers feel children do best with minimal parental interference. They know the more experiences their children have, the more confident they will be as adults.
• The Superhero
  Superheroes understand the value of hard work and persistence, and have high standards. Because Superheroes are dedicated to the end result, they help their children finish projects and provide encouragement and assistance to make sure they always do their best.

Any parent can learn a lot from taking the Edu-Parent Quiz! Go to http://www.dreambox.com/parentquiz and take the quiz to identify your Edu-Parent style. You'll then be able to learn more about the benefits and challenges of your particular style on our website. We encourage you to share it with your friends so they can find their Edu-Parent style too, and you'll find lots of ways on our site to easily share it!

Parent Tip: Play and Learn with Candy Land!

Many of us played Candy Land as children — young kids love it and it helps develop counting, color recognition, and other foundational skills. Here’s an idea for giving it more variety for children and adults alike.

Try playing with a squishy yellow die with dots representing the numbers 1 to 6. This lets kids practice the early math skill of recognizing dot patterns (or quick images) up to 6. You might be surprised how quickly they roll and say, “five” or “four” without counting each dot on the die. When it's your turn, model making your piece jump one space for each number counted. And when appropriate, help your child move or point to each space and count together. As kids move exactly one space for each number counted they are learning one-to-one tagging. Many children love playing the game this way, and you'll get to watch your child develop these important skills before your eyes!

One of our teachers has a lot more fun ideas for Candy Land variations that are appropriate for 3-6 year olds — you can read them on the DreamBox blog.

You can try DreamBox Learning K-2 Math FREE

DreamBox has launched DreamBox Learning K-2 Math, and it's available to anyone who signs up for a 14 day FREE trial! DreamBox Learning is solid math wrapped in fun web-based adventures that kids love, and there are over 100 lessons at each grade level.

But don't take our word for it! Read the latest review from ABC News. Or a review by a mom who writes The Best Stuff in the World blog, who said "Trust me, if you have a child somewhere in the range of 4-9 (though it's dependent on math skills more than age), you really want to know about this system." Or read why parents and teachers are recommending DreamBox to families everywhere!

Did you know?

Mathematician is ranked the best job

After comparing 200 different positions, JobsRated.com ranked mathematician as the country's best job in 2009. They considered salary as well as factors like job security, emotional stress, hiring outlook, and physical safety (lumberjack was considered the worst job). But even if your child isn't talking about becoming a mathematician, all of the top jobs, in fact most jobs, need math! Read more on CareerCast.com.

Earn free DreamBox subscriptions

When you're a DreamBox subscriber, you can earn free DreamBox months when you invite friends to try it too. As soon as you subscribe you can offer your friends 1 extra free month when they subscribe to DreamBox Learning. And for every new subscription from one of your friends, you'll get a free month of DreamBox too!