Anyone who has tried to change the margins of a bulleted list in Word knows that frustration on a deep level. This is the major downside of all educational technology: the user has to know how to communicate with the computer. Young kids, who are still learning how to use technology, can get very upset very quickly if they don't understand how to interact with Dragonbox, or with any application. The most important question to ask your child whenever they are playing on an educational app is "Are you getting frustrated?" If you want to explore how the Nooms work, you and your child can check out the Sandbox section of the app. The game is so intuitive and fun to explore that my main question to ask is "what happens when you do this?"Īsk your kid to combine two Nooms, split one apart, or make three that are the same size. The more connections your child has between numerals and other representations, the more automatic their reasoning with numerals will become. But repeatedly, they will be asked to connect those numerals to another representation of a number. ![]() They might see 3 and think "something that is three blocks tall."Īs your child moves through the app, they will encounter more and more numerals (the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on). Mostly, kids interact with numbers as a set of objects, so they think of 3 as "three blocks" or "three circles." When kids see numbers represented as lengths, they begin to understand how numbers can be used to measure objects, not simply to count them. I like the Dragonbox method of representing bars of different heights. I am talking specifically about Dragonbox Numbers. Note that Dragonbox has several other apps for older kids, but I haven't played those yet. If your child is in Pre-K through 1st grade, I highly recommend this game. ![]() I was skeptical at first, but the game won me over with its well-designed activities that get kids thinking about the relationships between numbers, rather than simply drilling math facts. Mostly, these apps focus on repetitive practice of math facts, which doesn't exactly sound like a rich mathematical experience.īut Dragonbox Numbers is a different sort of math app. And the math apps I've found have mostly been underwhelming. It's probably not hurting my kids too much, but it's probably not helping either. So I have a skeptical outlook on the value of screen time. On the other hand, I get freaked out when I leave my kids watching Peppa Pig on Youtube, only to return 20 minutes later to find them watching poorly animated train videos dubbed in Russian.
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