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Thank you for the reviews! Sounds like Dreambox might be better for DS4.5 as he loves that kind of set up. ixl sound more like something DS3 will enjoy eventually. DS4.5 has always had a great number sense. He's way ahead of where they are at in pre-school and is through most of the K curriculum from what I can tell (he just naturally picks up on the concepts without having to be really taught) so I need something like this that will be fun for him and he won't just sit around for 2 years waiting for most of the other kids to catch up.

After all the talk, we tried dream box, and it moves REALLY slow. DS spent 3 HOURS (Gah), and didn't get past counting, despite making only boredom errors.

does it not let you jump around between different topics? Do you have to just follow a certain path all the way?

you can jump around, but the lessons/tests/whatevers just follow you, so it's the same "wine" in different "bottles." There are 2-3 choices at a time, but they are very similar, and remain until completed

We've hit a similar glitch but for different reasons. Hanni is having particular difficulty with one sort of thing, and while at the beginning there were several kinds of games to choose from, she seems to have completed all lines of advance until she gets past this one bottleneck.

For your problem, I wonder if your kid made errors on pretest games that he should have been able to pass, and/or if he started at the wrong grade level? If either of these is the case, you could try starting over by creating a new account for him with a different name. I did this, because I made some mistakes in how I set up Hanni to begin with.

Another possibility is that he's simply playing too carelessly for Dreambox's algorithm to figure out what he knows, in which case it might not be a good fit for him.

We found the same thing with Dreambox. Tried it for two days but it went extremely slow. I couldn't take it. Now we do ixl and go the pace we want. It might not be as gamey, but at least it gets to the point. Timez attack has been awesome for speed drill on multiplication, and in a short time has helped tons and provides the fun game atmosphere.

He's not yet 4 and I put him for K. He passed the only pre-test he's done so far, and his error rate is prob c. 0.25/set
(mostly in groups of 2-3) He's done 1/4 of K in those 3 hrs.

I kinda think it's just that slow... maybe it'll pick up once they give him more pretests?

Oh and Times Attack also has a addition, subtraction, and division game, which really is the core of everything. It is made by big brainz and well worth it! We just use it for multiplication, but it all looks great for speed in these topics.

With only a two day trial of DB it is possible I'm not giving it a fair shake though. But it had my boy counting dots when he is strongly adept at doing any of the basic functions in his head, and has been carrying and borrowing in his head for over a year.

Phey, it sounds like you definitely need to restart at a higher grade level.

Here's another thought -- you can play "as a parent" so you don't mess up your kid's placement, and you can whip through a bunch of stuff and see what comes next. See if the later levels of Dreambox are likely to fit your kids needs or not.

I think I'm going to try homeschooling next year. There's nothing wrong with the school, no problems. I just want to keep my babies home. I feel a little selfish about it. I don't mind feeling selfish. They're my babies. It's my turn to be a mamma and these are my kids to raise.
The hubby says it's my choice to make as long as I keep the bedtime schedule the same as it is so they don't inturrupt his sleep by staying up all night. It's been going through my mind for a while and instead of going away the desire is getting stronger.

Reading eggs taught him to read real well. Kumon alphabet and Handwriting Without Tears 2nd grade workbook taught him to write. Now we've just started The Well Trained Mind notebooking. He has a 3-ring binder full of page protectors for history, science, and language arts. His language arts is an introduction to book reports. He copies one sentence from the book by hand to practice handwriting and good sentence structure. He then summarizes the story orally and I then write down what he says, Voila', book reports. In the history book we study the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. He tells me what to write down from what we just read (outlining and note-taking skills). He draws a picture to illustrate and it goes in the history notebook.

It slowly builds up over the year into a nice notebook. Over the past few months we've accumulated a few pages in each book. I think it's super cute. There's a picture where tribes were hunting reindeer herds and the picture he drew has a red nose. He said, I hope they don't expect any presents from Santa if they're hunting the reindeer. I said it's history, it already happened a very long time ago, way before George Washington. He said, then I bet they didn't get any presents from Santa because killing the reindeer will get you on the naughty list for sure.

He also traces maps for the history notebook.

Math is mostly Bedtime Math word problems and youtube videos.
like this:


I find them. He watches them. He tells me about what he's learning, sometimes while the video's playing. Sometimes he likes to draw it out on the whiteboard. Google (any math subject) + You Tube + either Khan academy or Singapore math to access these wonderful free lectures for little kids. Also google any math subject + Maria Miller Mammoth Math for a supergreat professional math teacher showing you how to teach your kid real well using pen and paper. Google skip counting by (any number) + You Tube to choose from a variety of cute catchy songs.