Dreambox Learning: Where Kids Have Fun Learning Real Math

DreamBox learning is a brand new online educational teaching tool that focuses on teaching kids math skills from Kindergarten-age through 5th grade. The lessons are individually tailored to each child and offers additional games “just for fun” as rewards for the children’s work.

The registration for the site was quick and easy. I was able to set up a parent account and accounts for each of my two older kids in one step. I logged in with my email address and the password I’d just set up and called my 6-year-old over to try it.

Then I walked away to start cooking supper. M was playing the games with no help from me, which told me that the site was easy for her to understand and the games were explained well. When I returned to check on her a few minutes later she looked up at me, smiled, and said, “This is fun!”

She played for about 15 to 20 minutes before I told her it was time to log off. She moaned and whined about it, so it must have been fun. I’d watched her do a few of the learning games and could hear the site telling her how she was doing. The activities she was doing were asking her to indicate which group of things had more than the other.

K, my 4-year-old son, also tried out the games, and although he was not as interested in it as his older sister, he did play for about 10 minutes the one time he played. He won’t start Kindergarten until this summer though so he’s just not quite old enough for it yet.

M, on the other hand, asked to play again and again almost every day. Unfortunately we were pretty busy for the first few days and she didn’t get to use it as much as she wanted to.

Dreambox sent me emails after the kids used the site to tell me what they played and what concepts they were learning, which I thought was a nice feature. They also sent me emails when my kids hadn’t been on the site in a few days, reminding me that they would get the most out of the site if they played for 15 minutes or more at least twice a week. I had mixed feelings about these reminder emails, finding them a helpful to remember to ask the kids if they want to play the games (which M almost always said yes) but also finding them a little nagging because my kids didn’t have a lot of time to be on the computer every week.

The kids each had their own account and were able to choose a picture password from a group of 9 photos. The kids appreciated that feature since they see me having to enter passwords for websites and they like to be grown up too.

Both kids enjoyed the learning games, although M, my 6-year-old got more out of the site than my 4-year-old did (though he is not in the target age anyway, as I noted earlier). They seemed to enjoy the games, yet were definitely still learning.

The subscription price, however, at $8.33 or more per month is a little expensive for our family given how little time my kids actually had to play the games with all the other activities (and homework!) that we have to do each day. They do offer a free trial that I can guarantee is worth the time checking out. You will be able to see if your children have the time to devote to it.

Overall, if your child needs additional help in math, or if you just want to reinforce how well your child is doing with math concepts DreamBox Learning delivers a fun learning experience. My first-grader especially enjoyed playing and learning and liked that she recognized the concepts from her schoolwork. She was very proud of herself each time she earned a token to play the fun reward games.

Find out what others are saying about Dreambox at PBN.