Dragon Box Algebra App

On Friday I mentioned Tech Time's list of the 15 Best Apps for Homeschooling.  I linked to the article on my facebook page, and a friend of mine posted a few days later that her kids were all over the Dragon Box Algebra app for ages 5+. She posted:

...its algebra for kids and the littles are obsessed with it. ... [My son] LOVED it. He finished the whole thing in 4 days. On the second problem, even though his age is all pictures, he looked at me and said "This is math. I like math." That in and of itself made it the best $5 I've spent in a very long time.

This is the app that sneakily teaches algebra while your children think they're just playing a game! Mane is finishing up pre-algebra this year and will be starting Algebra 1 over the summer or this autumn. I decided to give Dragon Box Algebra 12+ a try to help her approach algebra from another angle and to make conceptual sense of algebraic concepts. I believe alternate presentations of the same concept are essential to math success, and approaching math from different angles builds flexibility in the brain. This app does exactly that. From the website:

DragonBox presents the player with whimsical icons that must be manipulated until the ‘Dragonbox’, representing the unknown variable, is isolated on one side of the game board. ... Through the course of play, these icons are gradually replaced with numbers and variables until the player is solving real equations. The rules of variable manipulation are discovered through experimentation, and higher star ratings are obtained by manipulating variables more efficiently to isolate the ‘box’ in fewer steps.

Mane was dubious when we downloaded the app. The program does not present with rules. Players are expected to learn through play. This makes the rule-following child feel a little insecure...in a good way. She tried out the app with me and was quick to put it away. Later that day, however, when she'd been "forced" to find something to do while waiting for Mango to pick her up from swim practice, she took the time to explore and figure out the game, and now she's hooked.

Even better news? Dragon Box has a geometry App: Dragon Box Elements. We cannot wait to check it out!!

Homeschool - Learning a Foreign Language

We are embarking on a journey to learn German. In the past, I've tried to get Mane to learn some Spanish. She's been everywhere from totally resistant to very mildly interested. So, we dropped any attempts to work on a foreign language for a while. This semester I started talking to her about how she's going to need a foreign language in order to graduate from high school. She started casually mentioning wanting to learn German. She asked if DuoLingo (a language learning app that we've used for Spanish) has German. We checked, and she immediately started working through the first German lesson! For weeks now she's been playing around with German learning apps, attempting to use all the German phrases she's learning, and organizing a binder for keeping German vocab!

We've tested out a number of programs and apps, and it seems that a quick review might be helpful to others, who are also trying to learn a language at home. Here's our list:

• DuoLingo - Offers a huge range of languages, used by millions of people around the world, listed as one of the 15 Best Apps for Homeschooling by Tech Times, and it's FREE! The program includes listening, reading, writing, and speaking components. Progress is tracked and lessons are personalized. There's even an educator version now that allows teachers to track individual student progress. The only drawback that we have experienced is that Duolingo does not introduce common conversational phrases early in the program. So, the user learns to say, "I am a girl," and "The woman eats bread," but not, "Hello," or "Good Morning." Duolingo is, however, great for learning noun gender, verb conjugation, and general vocabulary. We love DuoLingo!
• Busuu - We were really excited about Busuu at first. Like DuoLingo, Busuu offers a range of languages, is used by millions of people, has won a number of awards, and is free. The activities are different from those used by Duolingo. So, while it offers all the same components, they're presented in a different way. However, after a short ad-free period when we first began using the app, we were quickly overrun with ads. It was too distracting and would make the app extremely difficult to navigate for younger kids.
• MosaLingua - Great for learning conversational phrases, and it's also free. The program offers flash cards for "learning" phrases, followed by activities, and then intermittent, timed practice based on research demonstrating how often people need to review to move things to long term memory. The app sends notifications to the user's mobile device that it's time to practice, and it tracks how many phrases have been learned. We have found this app indispensable for learning useful conversational phrases.
• Transparent - Free access to this online language learning program is available through Hennepin County Libraries. We found the program to be too drill/flash card oriented. There were some great activities, but it's no fun to get stuck on the flash card portion because it keeps setting you back every time you miss something. The program also relies on the user's feedback about whether they remembered a particular word or phrase, rather than having a way to test if the word or phrase was remembered.
• LiveMocha -  This is a free online program. It does not have a mobile app, and this was a serious drawback for us. LiveMocha is also somewhat similar to the free program our library offers. We haven't gone back to it in a while now.
• Coffee Break German - We LOVE Coffee Break German, the free podcast offered by Radio Lingua Network. We are only seven episodes in, but these are so rich in vocabulary, grammar, and culture that we have learned volumes! Radio Lingua offers instruction in French, German, Spanish, and Italian. They also have written materials available for purchase on their website.

With so many free resources available, I'm disinclined to purchase much. If we want it, our library also has Pimsleur, Mango Passport, and the Living Language Series. We have the Germanic American Institute not far from us, offering classes, cultural events, and conversation circles. And we found a number of inexpensive resource books from Half Price Books (textbooks and a German-English dictionary).

In the meantime, we're labeling everything in the house in German...

Reflex Math

In my previous post on Spelling Apps, I mentioned how much we love Reflex Math, and I still cannot say enough good things about this program. It isn't free. I guess that could be viewed as a drawback, but the truth is that it's worth every single penny, and the people who created it should get to make a living. So, I don't mind paying for it.

Since the very beginning of homeschooling, it's been apparent that Mane is a very different learner. She doesn't memorize math facts or spelling words just by seeing them regularly. She's been doing Saxon math since the 4th grade and was STILL multiplying and dividing very, very slowly at the beginning of this school year (7th grade). She was frustrated that math lessons were taking so long, and I was worried about her ability to be successful in higher mathematics. So, I set out to find a way for her to memorize math facts, aside from using them in her math lessons and without resorting to me quizzing her with flashcards. Knowing that, for Mane, sometimes the trick is just lots and lots of repetition, we tried out XtraMath. It's a free, drill-based program. Practice is timed and takes just a few minutes a day. The program tracks learner progress and gradually moves them through the math facts. However, a year later, Mane had not made a whole lot of progress. Truthfully, she wasn't fond of the program, and she dragged her feet about using it.

This year I heard about Reflex Math and decided to give it a try. They offer a free trial period to test out the program before buying. We liked it enough that we invested $35 for a one year subscription.

Similar to XtraMath, Reflex Math tracks learner progress and moves gradually through the math facts. Unlike XtraMath, however, "fact families" are introduced together so that learners can group or "chunk" their learning to assist and accelerate memorization. Reflex Math uses games for practice following a "lesson" portion of the program (which is also game-like). Learners feel successful from the beginning because the program is designed to give only a certain number of unknown facts mixed in with known facts. Carefully spaced repetition of unknown facts "jogs" the learner's memory as they play the games. Learners choose an avatar when they start the program, and playing games earns them tokens to spend on accessories, clothes, hairstyles, and a number of other things for their avatar. New games are unlocked based on how many days the program has been used. So, a learner does not have to meet a certain number of known facts to play new games. They just have to put in the effort to practice regularly.

What we love about Reflex Math:

• Free Trial Period
• "Fact Family" approach to math facts (Example: 3x4=12, 4x3=12, 12/3=4, 12/4=3)
• Progress Tracking (tracks days/minutes used, individual facts learned, percentage gain, total number of problems solved...)
• Individualized game play (spaced repetition of known & unknown facts based on individual student progress)
• Avatar reward system (use tokens earned through game play to purchase things for your avatar)
• New games unlocked at intervals based on number of days the program is used

The really great news? Mane went from 12% to 85% fluency with multiplication and division facts after 46 days of using the program! That's a gain of 3-4 new facts a day!

Fun, Effective Spelling Apps and/or Programs

Recently we went on a quest for apps or programs that might help Mane with spelling. Spelling does not come naturally to her, and the key to spelling for her is lots and lots of repetition. I seriously dislike quizzing her, and I have a hard time creating new word lists now that we've finished Logic of English. Mane has become brilliant with her math facts by using the online program Reflex Math. So, I was hoping for a spelling app or program that would work similarly. Because it's been such an involved process, I thought others might benefit from the information.

First, here's the short list of free android apps we tried and why we discarded them immediately:

• Brilliant Spelling - uses google voice and is super annoying
• Spell Friendzy - user must keep doing the same things over and over to have enough points to unlock new levels
• Spelling Mastery - cannot actually find this app in the play store
• Spellvetica - would not load
• Spelling Bee - opened with ads immediately
• Painless Spelling - designed to go with the book and also would not load
• Big IQ Kids - does not autoselect words or move through a sequence automatically

So, then we tried Learn That Word (more on that later). Once we discovered that we had to pay for the parts of Learn That Word that we really wanted, we decided to try Ultimate Spelling instead. It was less expensive and has been billed as the best spelling program on the market.

Ultimate Spelling was awful. Within a few hours of downloading the program and testing it out, I had contacted customer service asking for my money back and uninstalled the program. Here's why:

Things I wanted:  

• auto-generated word lists
• auto-tracking of progress
• spaced review/repetition
• individualized and automatic movement through the program

Things Ultimate Spelling said they had:

• the ability to get started quickly with expert lists, perfect for any grade level 1-10
• fun games based on levels of processing, operant conditioning, and spaced repetition
• detailed reports on spelling improvement (which I somehow took to mean that spelling improvement would be automatically assessed and progress through the program would happen automatically)

What I got: 

• expert lists that were FORTY-FIVE words long - resulting in me needing to sort and manually input lists because that's WAY TOO LONG for a new word list
• spelling practice that involved flashing the word for a few seconds and then having the student spell the word (Mane could do this absolutely forever and still never actually remember how to spell the word.)
• a terribly outdated and ugly user interface that wasn't nearly as engaging as their website
• games - not any better (and possibly worse because of the boring interface) than the free ones at Spelling City
• no automated determination of when a word is mastered or automatic, individualized movement to the next word or group of words. What I mean by this is that words have to be marked as "mastered" by either the learner or the teacher. The program does not have a built in system for determining mastery, taking old words off the list, or adding new words. Basically, everything has to be done manually, and the teacher/parent still has to quiz the student (on multiple occasions over time) to determine if a word has been mastered.

The best thing about Ultimate Spelling is that they have a money back guarantee/cancel any time policy. They did honor this policy, and I got my money back. 

So, we moved back to Learn That Word. We had tried it for free and then discovered that, although parts of the website are always free, the spelling quiz component of the website requires the purchase of "tokens." After such a bad experience with Ultimate Spelling, we decided to spend the money to purchase the smallest number of tokens and spend a little more time on the program to decide if we wanted to keep going. Learn That is a non-profit organization, which offers the spelling program Learn that Word. I like their mission statement: LearnThat Foundation Manifesto, and I appreciate the page comparing their program to Spelling City, which we used when Mane was younger: Spelling City Comparison.

Learn That Word is a quiz approach, not a "games" approach. But, unlike Spelling City or Ultimate Spelling, it has built-in repetition and review, which matter much more to us right now than games. The program is sequential and doesn’t require you to enter your own lists So, during quizzes the learner hears the word and sees a definition, sample sentence, photo, and blank spaces to represent the number of letters in the word. If the word is spelled incorrectly, the spaces are filled with whatever letters the learner got right. They then try to spell the word a second time. After the second try, the correct spelling is revealed.  Words that are spelled correctly on the first try are reviewed later, but they do not become part of the learner's spelling list and they do not use up tokens. Words not spelled correctly will be reviewed according to a spaced repetition pattern and must be spelled correctly a certain number of times to be considered mastered. Once a word is mastered, a token is subtracted from the learner's account. While doing quizzes, learners earn "gold coins," which may be exchanged to play games (like hangman). 

We are now 2 weeks into using Learn That Word, and it looks like this will be our program of choice for the next several months, if not years. There is a vocabulary component also, and both the spelling and vocabulary components extend into college level. 

Bullet Point list of what's great about Learn That Word:

• auto-generated word lists that can be customized for length
• automated progress tracking and movement through spelling lists based on individual performance and needs
• spaced review of previous words
• earned games
• spelling bee style quizzes
• access to vocabulary component
• optional (but not required) customization of spelling and vocabulary lists

Learn That Word is not a stand-alone spelling curriculum because phonics and spelling rules are not part of the program. I am comfortable with using it right now because Mane has already received (and continues to receive) instruction in phonics and spelling rules. If you want to use it in conjunction with a spelling program, there is an option to input your own words. 

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I feel that I should also say a few words about Spelling City. We used Spelling City for an entire school year, and it was excellent. We stopped because Mane was tired of playing the same games every week and was ready to move on to something new. (There are A LOT of games, but after a whole year it was still starting to get old.) I was tired of entering word lists and having to go back and create new lists of previously difficult words in order to make sure she was getting that spaced/timed review. Spelling City does have an option to use lists already on their site, but there is no way for the program to do an automatic spiral review, which is really important for Mane. This is not so important for student to whom spelling comes more naturally.

Bullet Point List of what's good about Spelling City:

• custom OR auto-generated word lists
• really great games
• allows teachers to assign games and activities ahead of time
• program tracks what assignments were done and what words were missed
• writing component allows teacher to log in and offer feedback

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If you have questions about our experience with any of these programs, leave them in the comments. I'll see what I can do to answer.    

Middle School Chemistry - Review

We finished up Middle School Chemistry from middleschoolchemistry.com this week, and I cannot say enough good things about this curriculum. It's totally FREE, but that it's nearly the best part. Middle School Chemistry was written by actual chemists, who clearly know the science, love it, and know how to teach it. Texts, labs, and animations are all available on the website in a clear sequence. Lessons reinforce and build one after another. Mane remembers things from the very beginning of the year because the concepts continue to be reinforced throughout the curriculum. Concepts that eluded me in college suddenly made sense when I went through the material with Mane. The text does not talk down to kids. It isn't silly or dumbed-down, yet it grabs the attention. The lessons all end with take-it-further labs and questions that relate the text and labs to real life situations.

And it wasn't hard. I'm serious. Chemistry is often considered the most difficult and esoteric of the sciences. Middle School Chemistry laid it all out in such a simple and straightforward way that it was almost impossible NOT to understand. It teaches all the correct vocabulary and concepts (I checked with my chemistry teacher husband) using language and explanations that you don't have to be a scientist to understand. After learning chemistry this way, though, a person could easily move on to become a scientist, having been taught the appropriate language in an understandable way!

Lab set-up to solve for an "unknown" substance

Can you tell what the unknown substance is?

More math on-line

I found another website with fun math games called Primary Games. I haven't looked around yet at the other games they have, but Mane played several of the math games. It was fun to watch BECAUSE I saw that she has a firm grasp on basic fractions, basic money, and basic telling time. You know, it's interesting the difference it makes when I can sit back & see what she can do, rather than just be the one constantly passing along information.

Math Games

Today we played a math game with dice. The game is played with 2 dice. The person whose turn it is rolls the dice & adds the numbers together. The scorekeepers writes down the number. Then it's the next person's turn. When play returns to the first person, their addition answer is added to their previous answer. The first player to reach 100 wins. I used this game to introduce Mane to simple 2-digit addition today. Though I did all the 2-digit addition myself, I showed her how it was done and had her help me with some of the sums.

Then I found a website called Gamequarium that has some simple math games. Mane played games while I got the bread machine working on a gluten free loaf of bread.

After some math games, Mane read 2 more Bob Books to me (level B, set 1, books 6 & 7). I continue to see her fluency improving. I'm so relieved. Later this week I'm going to take out the magnet letters and work with some of the new blends and sight words introduced by the last few Bob Books.

Then Mane played with some magnetic poetry for a while. This seems to be a good way to get her to play around with words and sound out those that she might know. She was happily surprised to find words that she had just become familiar with in the Bob Books today.

I seem to have lost Five in a Row Volume 2. I have no idea where I might have left it, but it isn't anywhere in this house. I could just cry. My plan is to call the library today to see if I might have left it there. Otherwise, I can't think of where it might be. *sniffle*

I took a look at What Your First Grader Needs to Know. We seem pretty well on track, which is nice. It's also nice to have the book around for when I start wondering what we should work on next.