July 25th, 2009

JumpStart Your Child’s Interest in Learning

As a home­school­ing mom, I am often look­ing for edu­ca­tional aids that my daugh­ter will find inter­est­ing and will give her me the oppor­tu­nity to track her progress. I was recently given the oppor­tu­nity to review Jump­Start Vir­tual World, an online and CD-based  3-D gam­ing world chil­dren ages 3–10, cre­ated by  Knowl­edge Adven­turewho is known for the award win­ning Jump­Start and Mas­ter Blaster series of edu­ca­tional games.

There are cur­rently two worlds which pro­vide dif­fer­ent games and activ­i­ties in read­ing, writ­ing, crit­i­cal skills, math, and art. Sto­ry­Land, for preschool­ers offers chil­dren the oppor­tu­nity to designs their own homes, read-along with sto­ries and play games like Con­cen­tra­tion (which encour­ages mem­ory),  sort­ing items based on let­ters, shapes, and col­ors, arrang­ing items based on size, and com­plet­ing var­i­ous puzzles.

While Jump­Start has been in beta since Decem­ber 2008, there are many addi­tions to it’s world. Adven­ture Land, for chil­dren ages 5–8, includes a num­ber of new games in which “kids are invited to explore a mys­te­ri­ous lost island off the coast of Jump­Start.” On the island, chil­dren will have to sur­vives mis­sions and explore a num­ber of mys­te­ri­ous dis­cov­er­ies using a com­bi­na­tions of speed, logic, and problem-solving to out­smart the vil­lains deter­mined to thwart their attempts at suc­cess. And there is so much more to the world. There are arcade games, music and videos, fun slides, space games and more.

So what do I think of the game? It’s amaz­ing. The online worlds and the the cd-based games offer numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties for par­ents to engage their chil­dren in learn­ing. It is proof the learn­ing does not have to be tedious and stress­ful. My only com­plaint is that my daugh­ter, 3, has a dif­fi­cult time using the mouse to play the games on her own and gets frus­trated. How­ever, because their on-screen char­ac­ters can wan­der around the land, I try to use this “rest time” to allow her to learn the use the mouse and the arrow keys.

My daugh­ter absolutely loves this game. We limit her use of TV and video games to about 30–40 min­utes a week and while I know that not every game and TV show can be edu­ca­tional, I love that she enjoys this edu­ca­tional game more than any other that we have tried. She loves slid­ing down the huge water slide and into the water and we spend a lot of time doing this repeat­edly. She also enjoys the mem­ory and letter-recognition games.

Take a look at the videos below to see my daugh­ter play­ing at Jump​Start​.com.

Cre­at­ing character

Explor­ing Jump​Start​.com

Explor­ing Storyland

May 15th, 2009

Product Review: Music Lessons from Trebellina

Tre­bel­lina is a won­der­ful CD that intro­duces and teaches chil­dren ages 1–4 music. Unlike many CD’s it is not sim­ply singing and bright col­ors– it has pur­pose and focus. From the start, my daugh­ter was mes­mer­ized. She sang along with the notes and she danced as hard as she could. Thanks to the “con­tin­u­ous play” option on the DVD menu, I was able to put it on mul­ti­ple times to soothe her “more music” cries. 

Tre­bel­lina and her friends Rock Bassey, Rest, Rhythmo and the Notes teach musi­cal the­ory and con­cepts in a way that keeps chil­dren engaged and inter­ested. The ani­ma­tion is filled with bright col­ors and is not too elab­o­rate that it takes away from what is being said.

My daugh­ter has always liked music, a pref­er­ence that she inher­its from me. I play piano by ear and while I also read music, I have always believed that learn­ing the notes is the most dif­fi­cult part of learn­ing the piano. How­ever, Tre­bel­lina tries to teach the notes of the tre­ble cliff as well as attempt­ing to teach pitch. Each note sings its name and my daugh­ter sings in reply. for her, Tre­bel­lina is a fun way to sing and make noise .

In addi­tion, the instru­men­tal inter­ludes includes the use of dif­fer­ent instru­ments which are all intro­duced to the viewer. From mara­cas to bon­gos, Tre­bel­lina is packed with a nice range of instru­ments, sounds, and rhythms.

Here is my daugh­ter danc­ing along to the music and play­ing her imag­i­nary instru­ments that Tre­bel­lina intro­duced to her.

January 7th, 2009

Homeschooling: a continued discussion

I was recently inter­viewed by NYC Edu­ca­tion Exam­iner Lorri Giovinco-Harte regard­ing my expe­ri­ences being Home­schooled and how those expe­ri­ences shped my views of teach­ing. Read the inter­view here.

I am not going to say much here because I really want you to read the inter­view, how­ever, there are some addi­tional points that I would like to make. 

Firstly, I believe that any par­ent who can make the time to home­school can home­school suc­cess­fully if he/she is also will­ing to seek out infor­ma­tion. There is so much infor­ma­tion that we as tax­pay­ers do not know, but home­schools does not have to be expen­sive. In fact, if you pay PS taxes, you can take advan­tage of a lot of edu­ca­tional resources offered by your district.

Sec­ondly, I do not believe that all peo­ple who enter the teach­ing field are good teach­ers. How­ever, I do believe that so many good teach­ers don’t reach their full poten­tial because they are over­whelmed and under­sup­ported. If the teach­ers feel this way, then how must the stu­dents? It’s a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion that could be con­trolled if the focus of Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion were actu­ally to educate.

And finally, while I believe Home­school­ing is amaz­ing, I do think that it is impor­tant for chil­dren to be given expo­sure to tra­di­tional acad­e­mia if pos­si­ble. I have known a few peo­ple who were home­schooled straight through HS and had prob­lems adjust­ing to col­lege– sit­ting in class and find­ing their places in a tra­di­tional class­room setting.

With that said, go read the arti­cle!