Help with Math and writing decisions for 10yo please

[Melodiya99]

I keep going back and forth about what to do with my dd this year. She's very mathy and very language oriented (she wants to be an engineer who writes children's books while being a linguist where there isn't a written language:). Up until now we've been pretty informal and I've been very happy with our homeschool life, but I have 5 kids and want to outsource a little to free up my time to work more with the kids coming up. She's technically in 6th grade.

 

For math, I'm trying to decide if she should finish the beast academy series or go into aops pre-algebra. She passed the aops pre-algebra placement easily, but is only in 4c of beast academy since it's just been our supplemental curriculum. We have always had our primary curriculum be just me explaining how to do things and practicing using real life situations as they come along, and on the days we don't do that, she'll do some beast academy. She knows how to do all the arithmetic it teaches, but the types of problems definitely makes her think (she'll sit her going back and forth between "arrrrgh it's so hard, I'll never figure this out" to crazy laughter, "that was actually so easy" to humming cheerfully as she works...I mostly ignore and enjoy the commentary:) I know she can do it BA independantly, but if she did pre-alg I'd want to sign her up for a class. I don't want to hold her back just because pre-a will be challenging, but maybe another year to mature might be good for her?

 

For writing, she's always been a great creative writer, but we haven't spent much time on essays, mostly because she strongly prefers fiction over nonfiction in her reading (I don't blame her, lol:). I signed her up for WTMA expo1, but I don't know if that's going to progress too slowly for her. She picks up everything very easily, so when she's taken in person co-op classes, nobody had anything but good things to say about her writing, so it wasn't very helpful. I don't want it to be a situation where she does everything correctly so she doesn't get much helpful feedback. That's not to say she won't learn stuff, but I'm not sure how much repetition she actually needs. I just need to have a class that gives her feedback and she can do mostly independently.

[wapiti]

What is the reason you would want to sign her up for the class?  Bear in mind that the online class includes additional work, a weekly problem set with a long-response problem all submitted online, as well as Alcumus.  The weekly long-response question must be done prior to the due date or the chance to have it graded is lost.  The assigned work in the book is best completed prior to the class at which that topic will be discussed; the book portion is not graded.

 

IIRC, Prealgebra is broken up into two online courses.  Perhaps have her start the book and see whether the time it takes her to complete sections would correspond to the pace of the online class.  Then, if she is interested and her pace is sufficient, sign her up for the online class for the second half of the book.  Or, wait until she is a few chapters in before starting an online portion.

 

Whether she needs help from you when working through the lesson problems may depend on the section and need not be super time consuming for you.  I'm not sure that doing the online course will really make a big difference in how much of your time is required, at this age anyway.  (It might even be the opposite, where she wants you near when she is completing an online problem set and thus require more of your time, though the real key for the online component going smoothly IMO is that the book work is completed prior to the online problem set.)

[Kathy in Richmond]

Have you seen the new AoPS Handbooks for Prospective Students & Parents and Current Student & Parents? They may be interesting to look over and helpful in making your decision. The It Will Be Hard page shows their philosophy & will give you realistic expectations. 

 

My daughter (who was like your description of your dd years ago) currently works for the AoPS school after years of taking their online classes. Her recommendation for students in their online courses is to read the chapter before class time, but not to feel that they need to solve all the chapter exercises and end of chapter problems beforehand. Those can be done, but are optional.

 

Your daughter would get Alcumus assignments and weekly homework that is not from the textbook, both short answer and writing/proof problems.  Personally, I think the feedback on the writing problems is really valuable & not as easily reproduced with home study of the books.

 

One other thing that my kids enjoyed was meeting their online classmates outside of class time in their open classrooms to study together sometimes. They greatly enjoyed interacting with them the on the forums, too. She can also ask questions on the class message boards if she ever gets stuck (they all do!) or needs clarification.

 

If you do decide to go with the online AoPS class & for any reason it's not a good fit, you can get a full refund any time before the 3rd class.

 

Good luck!