Can anyone tell me about the Kinetic program?

[thowell]

I am looking at the pre-algebra level and wondered what the reviews were. What kind of math student did this program seem to fit? I was looking at enrolling my dd in FLVS for their pre-algebra math but I am still so unsure. She is a very visual learner if that makes a difference.

[AngieW in Texas]

My two older girls have used Kinetic Books.

 

My oldest was a beta-tester for their Algebra II program and my middle dd used it for Algebra I and Algebra II.

 

I think Kinetic Books has great math programs.

 

Here's what you find in the Algebra I and Algebra II programs:

 

At the bottom of the TOC (Table of contents), you will Appendices with a list of what's in the Appendices after that. There is always a review down there that you can choose to work through. In the Algebra II course, the appendix has an Algebra I review. You can skip through the text part and just work the problems to see if you're ready to begin or need to do some reviewing of old material first.

 

Chapter 0 is the welcome chapter and walks you through the features of the text and how to use them. If you haven't used a KB product before, you should go through this section. If you have, then I would only skim it in case they've added more features that you don't already know about.

 

Each chapter is divided up into several units and each unit is divided up into several sections. The sections are not the same length, so assigning a certain number of sections each day really doesn't make sense. I actually had my kids use a timer to figure out how much to do each day. If you buy the hs version of KB, it is divided up into lessons for you with an introductory video for each lesson. I bought my KB before there was a hs version.

 

Each unit has several sections that have practice problems scattered throughout and then there is a kinetic homework section and an end-of-unit section at the end of each section. Kinetic homework and the practice problems all have immediate feedback and many of these problems also have stepped help. The end-of-unit section is just a page of problems that you are supposed to do with pencil and paper. There is an answer key that you can access at the bottom of the page by clicking on "view answers", but it only has answers to the odd problems. The odds were plenty for my kids. There isn't a solution manual for these problems, just an answer key.

 

At the end of each chapter is a summary, a practice chapter test, and a standardized test.

 

The summary just lists the concepts taught in the chapter with a link to go back to where each concept was taught to refresh your memory.

 

The practice chapter test has problems that cover the whole chapter with immediate feedback.

 

The standardized test is multiple choice and has questions that cover the whole chapter.

 

Some chapters also have cumulative tests that have problems from all of the chapters that have been covered so far. These come up every 3-4 chapters and are intended to be done with pencil&paper and have an answer key only for the odds, just like the end-of-unit reviews.

 

KB definitely goes in depth. Algebra I covers all the way through the quadratic equation and goes all the way to finding solutions with 3 equations and 3 unknowns and optimizing solutions with inequalities. Algebra II includes some solid trigonometry materials and has a pretty extensive coverage of matrices as well.

 

I would love to have my youngest using Kinetic Books as well, but she won't use a math program that's on the computer.

[thowell]

Thank you for the review. I am thinking of starting dd in the Pre-Algebra. she is solid on all her basic math skills except decimals and percents which we are working on now. Are there any other areas she should brush up on for this level?

 

Anyone else have any experience with this or opinions?

[thowell]

anyone else?

[MyThreeSons]

I tutored a student a couple of summers ago who was using KB Pre-Algebra. It was the original edition, not the newer, made-for-homeschool edition. I found it to be very thorough and quite rigorous. I remember thinking that the student would find much of Algebra 1 easy because he would have already had practice with many of the concepts.

[Keep the Faith]

bump:lurk5:

[SkateLeft]

My younger dd used KB Pre-Algebra and rolled right into Jacob's Algebra this year with no difficulty at all. I didn't put her into KB Algebra 1 because I wasn't sure how much she was retaining with the online program, and I wanted something with a stronger offline component for her. Considering how well she's done in Algebra 1, I think I'll probably have her use KB for Algebra II. Although I was originally concerned about having her use an online program for math, it clearly didn't cause any issues.

[AngieW in Texas]

My 16yo is using Lial's Precalculus this year after having used KB for Algebra II last year. There have only been a few topics in Lial's Precalculus that weren't covered to the same depth in KB Algebra II. She found the explanations in KB to be much better than in Lial's. Several times she has gone back to her old KB Algebra II program (I bought the cd that doesn't time-out) to read their explanation because she didn't remember how to do a problem and the explanation in Lial's didn't make sense to her. She really dislikes the way that Lial's Precalculus teaches matrices. She thought that KB made it all easy and Lial's makes it look really hard even though it isn't.