My oldest child is pretty darned good at a lot of stuff, if I may say so myself.  She’s a top reader, she swims like a fish, and I’m always amazed by what a good big sister she is.

She does struggle with a few things though, like putting her dirty clothes in the hamper and eating the same dinner as the rest of the family.  Oh, and math.  Math is a bit of a challenge for her too.

Kyle is the son of a math teacher, and I’m the daughter of an engineer.  While that might make it sound like math should come naturally to her, it actually means that both of us know what it feels like to have a parent throw up his hands in frustration and say, “What do you MEAN you don’t understand?”  So we really try hard not to do that.

Thing is, sometimes a parent isn’t the best person to help a child grasp mathematical concepts.  DreamBox to the rescue!

DreamBox is a cool new online math learning tool for kids in grades K-2.  It includes more than 350 lessons in the form of adventures that respond dynamically to the child as they “play”.  The lessons conform to the math curriculum standards set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and they’re intended to develop “conceptual understanding, computational fluency, and problem-solving ability.”

I checked out the DreamBox curriculum page and was gratified to see that in fact the focal points for the first grade curriculum listed there do mirror what I’ve been seeing on Tacy’s math worksheets.  I’m not a teacher myself, obviously (god bless teachers for the job they do - I could never be one), so I don’t have a strong opinion on what sort of techniques are most effective where it comes to introducing math concepts.

However, I do think it’s important that whatever techniques are used, kids need to develop a positive association with math early on.  Math concepts build on each other, and they simply don’t stop.  The difficulties I had in Algebra I, way back in eighth grade, kept compounding all the way through high school and college.  I never did catch up.

Worse, math starts to play a crucial role in other subjects - like chemistry and physics - even as early as high school.  A freshman engineering student like me who never mastered Algebra I is going to be [expletive] when she encounters Fluid Dynamics or Linear Circuits.

But back to first grade, where all this learning begins, and to DreamBox, which helps kids internalize the logic of mathematical concepts.  In some ways, early math seems like a bunch of memorization - 1+1=2 because it just DOES.  Sure, you can count on your fingers, but eventually you’re going to run out of fingers, and besides, it’s just easier to memorize what those answers are.

What DreamBox reinforces, through games that illustrate these concepts, is a means of logically thinking  through the problem to get to the answer.  Think about it: How often in life are we presented with a problem in the form of x+y=z?  Most of the time, we’re figuring out word problems - the exact sort of problems many of us hated because we couldn’t just scribble down our memorized answers.  We actually had to think through those problems, and we hadn’t learned to do that right from the beginning, the way our kids are now.

Furthermore, when I wrote that DreamBox responds dynamically to the child, I didn’t just mean that the program gives her an “Attagirl!” when she answers correctly or a “Try again!” when she makes a mistake.  DreamBox actually adjusts the lesson - the difficulty, the pacing, the information provided to Tacy as she plays - based on her answers and how long she takes to arrive at them, WHILE she is playing.  More personalized even than a personal tutor!

Who knows what Tacy will want to study when she gets to college, or if she’ll even go to college.  Maybe she’ll become a child star and start paying the mortgage. (I can dream, right?) But the important point is that a lack of understanding of math fundamentals won’t keep her from what she wants to pursue.

To learn more about the DreamBox online math learning tool, check out their website and the other Parent Bloggers Network reviews!

Some of you may be familiar with my friend Jenn’s gaming blog, Aggroqueen. Basically, Jenn’s whole family was heavily involved in the online game World of Warcraft, and since she couldn’t beat them, she joined them.

My husband is also a WoW disciple, and now that my older daughter is reading, he has introduced her to the cult community. I’ve joked about how if she had a gaming blog like Jenn’s, it would be called Aggrotot. But while I like it that she can follow the game and understands the concepts of completing quests and exchanging currency for goods, I’m still a little put off by some of the adult themes (read: violence) in the game.

So when one of my fellow PBN bloggers was unable to try out the new Knowledge Adventure game - JumpStart World - because it’s unfortunately not Mac-compatible, I have to admit I was excited to become her stand-in. She mailed her CD to me, I received it yesterday, and it went directly from mailbox to CD-ROM drive. Other than a brief overnight respite, my daughter has been glued to the PC, and instead of killing mythical creatures, she’s completing learning games and missions. She LOVES this game.

Even more impressive, the version we received is the second grade one (she’s in kindergarten), and while she’s run into a few hurdles she couldn’t quite leap on her own, she’s (forgive the expression) kicking ass and taking names - which makes her feel like a real big shot. I honestly can’t even tell you how far she’s progressed because she won’t stop playing long enough to let me check out the game for myself, but she and my husband have already told me that we need to subscribe so that she can get more adventure packs*.

While I love that she’s taking a break from WoW, I’m even happier that she’s showing such excitement for learning. She loves going to school and loves asking me millions of questions on every topic from human anatomy to world history. We’re thrilled to encourage her natural curiosity outside the context of formal education, and JumpStart World is one more great way to do that. It’s going to be a perfect diversion for her over the upcoming holiday break, which makes it an ideal holiday gift too.

*The CD and first two adventure packs are $19.95, available for grades K-2. But if you’d rather give it a test whirl before buying, check out the free trial option instead. I’m betting you and your child will be hooked.

You wouldn’t know it now, but I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital age.  An unpleasant experience with coding in my freshman year of college convinced me that technology was evil.

Fast forward fifteen years, and now I debug HTML with a minimal amount of cursing.  Strange days, indeed.

But while I’ve never fully embraced the capabilities of PDAs like my old Blackberry or my cell phone, and Kyle and I used his Palm Pilot primarily to play Dope Wars (and I will forever and ever be the top scorer!), the project manager in me loves the idea of organizing my world even more so than it is already.

Cozi Central is a free organizational software product pioneered by some former Microsoft employees.  You can use it to set up and modify family schedules, task lists, shopping lists, and even upload pictures.  Finally, everyone can be on the same page - literally.

Although it’s going to take more time for us to fully integrate Cozi into our lifestyle, I can already see plenty of ways in which we can take advantage of its capabilities.  For example, collaborating on the grocery list will be a tremendous help for us.  I also think we could use the calendar for meal planning, which goes hand in hand with grocery shopping.  That may not sound like a big deal to you, but figuring out what to have for dinner - and assessing whether we have the right ingredients - is a recurring challenge for us.

Our family schedule hasn’t yet become too unmanageable, but it soon will be.  My older daughter starts kindergarten in a few months, and with school comes a plethora of details to track - not to mention the logistics of drop-off and pick-up, and pre-school for my younger daughter, and remembering which nights Kyle works late, and I haven’t even begun to consider my own schedule yet.  Hey, maybe if we mothers input all the tasks that we handle each day, our husbands would see how busy we really are!

Speaking of tasks, that’s another feature of Cozi Central that we can really use - creation and management of task lists.  There’s always a million things that need to be done, and even though you can keep a grocery list on the refrigerator, it’s not so easy to maintain a task list that way.  You’ll probably head out to get the groceries within a week at the most, but some of those big tasks can take months to finish.  Cozi allows you to keep track of them without cluttering up the refrigerator or forgetting to finish what you started six months ago.

You may not think you need organizational software, but Cozi is free - so why not give it a try?  And give yourself a month or so to play with it and find new ways to make it fit your needs.  You just may find that you’re using your cell phone for more than Tetris and texting your partner to bring home another bottle of wine.

Cozi Central can be downloaded from their home page - the PC version requires XP with Service Pack 2, and Macs can use the web access version of Cozi.

Check out more reviews of Cozi Central, sponsored by The Parent Bloggers Network!