DreamBox! Brought to you by www.dreambox.com and The Parent Bloggers Network.

I have a dream.

I dream that the television is the parent.

How’s that for refreshing and embarrassing honesty?

I’ll go one step further - and mind you, this is coming from a person who until recently didn‘t even allow cable television into her home, and still thinks that the twelve channels we have is fourteen too many -

Some days, I have a dream about how great it would be if the television and the computer hung out together each morning over coffee and worked out an entertaining, age-appropriate, individualized, and enriching childcare schedule all on their own.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to spend endless hours alongside my kids as they explore and discover each and every nook and cranny of the new media - television and computer, iPods and cell phones. I want to be there with them in the comfy chair, guiding them away from danger spots, journeying with them on their never-ending quest to squeeze out five more minutes of screen time before I finally freak out about the pile of laundry still sitting in the baskets in their bedrooms and scream like a nut that the house is never clean and that I‘m going to give away all our screens to poor kids in China.

I want to be there to teach my children in the media-moment and engage them in critical discussions about this advertisement for more plastic crap or that depiction of girls as being powder-pink floof heads who only care about hair and nails and cute boys named “Cody” or “Jake“.

However, like most modern day suburban moms, I have things to do. Stuff. Important stuff. Just fill in the blank with some sort of far-reaching and heroic volunteer community service work, and imagine me doing it at some point during the week. Then there’s the cat vomit I’m always cleaning up. Oh, and the thing where I put food in a pot and boil it beyond recognition and serve it to my family…that takes up time, too.

And besides, if I have to watch one more kids show about cute boys or talking kittens or whatever, I’m going to intentionally fall down and hit my head. Hard.

So, I admit it. I sometimes choose my babysitters willy-nilly. You say you’re 12 years old, like to throw rocks at dogs, and you smoke two packs a day? But you can watch my kids for an hour while I run to the grocery store? Sold! You can show my kids bright shiny graphics and entrance them with a repetitive music that sounds not unlike a heart monitor in orgy with a gumball machine and a bike horn? And you’ll stop them from arguing with each other for a blissful half hour while I take the easy way out…and maybe a quick nap? I’m yours!

And what really went on while I was at the store or down for the count? I don’t know. They’re good kids, my lot…but still, I have the Not Knowing What They Were Learning From The Screen guilt. I still have the wish - the dream - that I could just let go of being a control freak and instead enjoy my parenting downtime. I dream that my kids will someday say with frank honesty, “My mom didn’t monitor everything I watched as a kid and look at me, I turned out okay” and that they utter this phrase from somewhere other than the locked side of state penitentiary .

I dream this.

And suddenly, I find that my dreams may, in part, come true. Thanks to DreamBox.

Thanks to DreamBox, I can now take comfort that at least some of my kids’ screen time will be used toward industrious and educational ends, and yet still be entertaining enough to keep them quiet through my nap time. I mean, check this out from the DreamBox Learning K-2 Math website:

• DreamBox individualizes learning through continuous assessment and adaptations during lesson game play. Lessons, hints, level of difficulty, pace, sequence, instructional tools, and many other aspects of the experience are tailored to help your child learn.
  
  
• It's a robust math curriculum, with over 350 lessons built on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards.
  
  
• It builds understanding and confidence in math fundamentals being taught in the classroom, through in-depth focus on Number Sense and Computation.
  
  
• To enhance learning, students use virtual manipulatives rather than just clicking on an answer.

I don’t know New Math from Old Math from manipulatives from a cheese sandwich. But I do know this: at the end of three half-hour long sessions on the DreamBox website, my 2nd grader was diligently adding negative numbers along a number line, and I know for a fact that she didn’t know a negative number from a sandwich, cheese or otherwise, before she started.

As far as entertaining goes, the math adventures through pirate, pixie, dinosaur and pet lands actually lured my daughter from her sister’s gaming station (where, I believe, Lego Hans Solo was battling a Lego Ewok, so you know...entertaining!) so I’ll vouch for DreamBox’s claim that the games are “fun”.

My daughter, by the way, just raved and raved about the wide range of choices available for the animated character that would represent her on her math adventures. I thought the characters were cute, possibly even "funky" with hip hairstyles and, yes, “cool" outfits, but according to my daughter, I obviously didn’t fully appreciate the deep importance of having so many cute and funky characters to choose from. My daughter stressed that I simply must mention this point of vast variety in anime autonomy, and that other kids would think it's “awesome". So it’s been mentioned.


But more so than being entertaining, more even than being educational, I must thank DreamBox that I don’t have to give up being the dear control freak you’ve come to know and love.

After my daughter’s first session on DreamBox, I received an email.

And the email went like this:

Dear Madam Halushki,

Your daughter, Seconda, is off to a great start in DreamBox Learning! She has played for the first time and is currently learning to order and compare numbers up to 100.

When she began, her first game was actually a behind-the-scenes placement lesson that allowed us to start her at the right place in the math curriculum based on what she already knows and should skip, and what she should focus on. For example, Seconda demonstrated her understanding of comparing sets of up to 100 objects and making equations using comparison symbols (>, <, or =). You can find more detail on Seconda's progress in the curriculum on the Parent Dashboard, at play.dreambox.com! Your encouragement to keep playing is so important to Seconda’s success! She chose to play the Pets adventure – in this story she is finding and gathering all the kittens before supper is served! Be sure to ask her to show you the lesson games she has played, so you can celebrate her progress together . Research suggests that children will benefit most if they're coming back to learn regularly, for at least 15 minutes at a time. We encourage parents to try to make DreamBox a regular, healthy part of their child's schedule, playing 2 or more times each week. If you have any comments or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at play@dreambox.com.

Warm regards,
The DreamBox Learning Team

Warm regards?

That was a freaking love note from my computer!

How’s that for a box of tubes and wires caring enough to let you know what your kid is up to?

And each time my daughter plays DreamBox, I get another email telling me what she’s been learning, what games she’s been playing, and how she’s progressing in math. (She’s doing swell, thank you very much.)

And now, oddly, I find myself in the awkward position of feeling a new guilt - the guilt that a computer program may know more about my kid than I do. Well...at least when it comes to her progress in using animated bunnies and a number line to work with negative numbers.

But you know what? It’s not a guilt I’m going to lose sleep over.

In fact…*yawn*…I’m going to hit the hay right now, to sleep - perchance to dream! - knowing that my kids are safe in the hands of DreamBox. Oh, so aptly named!

Just don't let them eat Oreos and Kool-Aid for lunch, DreamBox. That's still a no-no.