Is there a thread for Beast Academy dropouts?

[Ariston]

If not, lets start one :))

 

I know it is way too soon to decide we're really dropouts since we didn't even finish the polygon section of 3A, but we've left it for now...

 

 

My son did not want to admit it but i could tell he didn't like it. Eventually he admitted that it stressed him out and was alternately too easy or too hard. I was not thrilled with it either. I just didn't feel like he was learning anything. He was going through the problems fine, but i could tell it wasn't really sticking. It had more explanation than he is used to (he's used to more of a discovery approach) so I think that he kind of checked out mentally--there is lots of 'talk'. The comic aspect offset that a bit, but in my experience kids learn math better when they are allowed to make connections themselves rather than listening to someone else's explanation.

 

My son loves math but is not a precocious or advanced student. Maybe a quicker student would read the chapters, 'get it' and move on. The pacing was a problem...for instance learning 6 new terms in one or two days (isosceles, equilateral, scalene, obtuse, acute, right) was just too fast for him. He understood the concepts, but had to keep being reminded....it felt like we were cramming for a test rather than really learning!!

 

Who knows...maybe at some point we'll revisit and have a totally different experience. But for now I'm wondering....if we don't like BA, does that mean we won't like AOPS?

[Farrar]

I have twins and it has worked for one and not the other. For my ds who it didn't work for, it was just as you said - alternately too easy and too hard. He will continue to read the guides with us since we'll have them for his brother.

[Ariston]

I have twins and it has worked for one and not the other. For my ds who it didn't work for, it was just as you said - alternately too easy and too hard. He will continue to read the guides with us since we'll have them for his brother.

 

Just out of curiosity, is the one who it worked for 'quicker' with math? I'm curious if it is a better program for quick students, and less so for average students?

[fourisenough]

I would encourage you to take a break from it, but when the mood strikes, try it again with a different chapter. I think the shapes chapter was THE most difficult and frustrating for my daughter. She has enjoyed every other topic immensely and has, though it wasn't her first introduction to any of the material, sailed right through the rest of the books.

[Farrar]

 

Just out of curiosity, is the one who it worked for 'quicker' with math? I'm curious if it is a better program for quick students, and less so for average students?

 

 

No. Neither of my boys are "quick" at math. Mushroom is my Miquon boy. He didn't do well with MM or MEP. He has some math anxiety but when he's on, he's really good at making connections and seeing different ways to solve problems and can be good at puzzles. He's naturally good at word problems, but he can get stuck when he doesn't get the facts right. He's very slow with his math facts. Beast Academy worked for him. He's on 3B now.

 

BalletBoy is my MM boy. He finished MM3 and needed more work on concepts so he's doing some bits of MEP 3B right now. He likes to learn the algorithm and move on. He's faster with his facts, but not fast at all. He has gotten good at word problems, but it has taken a lot of structuring. He's terrible at math puzzles. Beast Academy didn't work for him. He was either flying through the problems or whining and completely stuck. I didn't feel like it was helping him learn anything new.

 

I think Beast Academy probably works for kids who are patient with math (that's not either of my boys!) and kids who can get drawn into really solving a problem (that is my Mushroom... on a good day). I'm hopeful that this means he will be able to do AoPS eventually for pre-algebra and algebra and so forth. I'm trying to get him to see that he has a lot of math potential.

[Job384]

I second that about the shapes chapter. You might have much better luck with the others.

[wapiti]

 

Just out of curiosity, is the one who it worked for 'quicker' with math? I'm curious if it is a better program for quick students, and less so for average students?

 

 

I can't answer for her, but just wanted to point out that "quicker" is not necessarily the same as "math-talented." Some math-talented kids may operate on slow speed when it comes to certain things (e.g. writing arithmetic), fwiw.

[Arcadia]

Who knows...maybe at some point we'll revisit and have a totally different experience. But for now I'm wondering....if we don't like BA, does that mean we won't like AOPS?

 

My boys did not like the textbook samples for 3A to 3D so I didn't buy the books. For them it was the visuals (sensory issue) of the textbook that turn them off. Older has no issue with AoPS prealgebra though as it is only three colors (black text on white, light purple box, light gray box). So it really depends on why your child don't like BA.

[Mom-ninja.]

My ds complains about the amount of practice problems. I've started letting him skip problems.

[stripe]

alternately too easy or too hard.

 

This is just how I felt. Lots of easy problems, then one hard or medium one and then a stumper. Or occasionally no stumper at all!

 

I will say that the times tables were memorized while using BA books (my son had supposedly memorized them but had already forgotten them by the time we arrived at whatever chapter that was), but that was also because I became Sgt. Tough, who wouldn't stop the drill until they were learned. The problems in that section were extremely repetitive though, and about five times writing out the times tables plus doing those bullyseye problems took care of that learnin'. Eventually my son screamed/cried at me that BA is a program that is all about drill. I lay down on the floor and laughed for a while when he said that, but I do think the level is not entirely a good match because he'd done several of these topics already. It was kind of a love/hate relationship. We did drop it for a while but came back for more. I was almost ready to order c and d, but decided not to. I am recalibrating my approach, and I am really tired of arithmetic. MEP's roman numeral fixation is getting on my nerves; my son said one page was giving him nightmares. I looked at it and skipped it. I mean, addition with roman numerals? There's only so much of that a kid needs to do. There's a reason they got replaced by place value and arabic numbers.

 

I am not sure what to make of BA or AOPS, but I haven't seen any of the more advanced math books from them.

[Farrar]

This is just how I felt. Lots of easy problems, then one hard or medium one and then a stumper. Or occasionally no stumper at all!

 

...

 

MEP's roman numeral fixation is getting on my nerves; my son said one page was giving him nightmares. I looked at it and skipped it. I mean, addition with roman numerals? There's only so much of that a kid needs to do. There's a reason they got replaced by place value and arabic numbers.

 

The easy problems somehow led my other ds into getting the hard ones on several occasions though (in other cases, he needed to be talked through it). So I think there's something to it... just not for every kid.

 

We have skipped every single time MEP tries to teach us Roman numerals. What is up with that? Is it some weird British obsession?

[serendipitous journey]

 

The easy problems somehow led my other ds into getting the hard ones on several occasions though (in other cases, he needed to be talked through it). So I think there's something to it... just not for every kid.

 

We have skipped every single time MEP tries to teach us Roman numerals. What is up with that? Is it some weird British obsession?

 

:lol: yes. They're in Galore Park too.

 

Britain is littered with Roman artifacts and also with monuments that have dates in Roman numerals. So I think it's relevant cultural knowledge there.

 

We LOVE the Roman numbers around here ... at least I do ... I won't bother asking A., he might falsify my premise and I'd have to recant ...

[FairProspects]

Ooh, where are the Roman Numerals in MEP? Ds loves them! He would really enjoy doing math with Roman Numerals and has made up some problems like this on his own for fun. :p

[Arcadia]

Ooh, where are the Roman Numerals in MEP? Ds loves them! He would really enjoy doing math with Roman Numerals and has made up some problems like this on his own for fun. :p

 

 

http://www.cimt.plym...k9/y9s1act1.pdf

http://www.cimt.plym...ok7/y7s6act.pdf

http://www.cimt.plym...mary/pb4a_1.pdf

http://www.cimt.plym...mary/pb2a_1.pdf

 

There are more though

[lorisuewho]

The roman numeral comments make me laugh. I LOVE them. To me it is like learning Greek, or breaking a code! How exciting!

[stripe]

My son is perfectly happy to decode things, but doing arithmetic with roman numerals is not something I feel is an important skill. We have done some of it, but lots of it? No. It is horrid and was supplanted because it is so cumbersome to use them for arithmetic.

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

We are almost through book A and dd will move to book B but we are working very slow through it and dd cannot do it on her own. I do notice there are benefits to using BA so we will continue but just extra slowly. If i asked dd she would probably say she does not like BA. She usually groans when we pull it out now, but it is getting her to think differently, so BA is making her brain work hard. I notice when we finish a lesson she usually wants to just go swing or relax.

I don't think we are drop outs but we are not the normal users of BA though.

[Ariston]

 

I can't answer for her, but just wanted to point out that "quicker" is not necessarily the same as "math-talented." Some math-talented kids may operate on slow speed when it comes to certain things (e.g. writing arithmetic), fwiw.

 

I agree. My son considers himself 'mathy' and loves to think mathematically even though he does not get things quickly. I wonder, though, since BA comes from a math competition company, which is a very specific subset of mathematical thinking, if they are geared more towards quick thinkers or toward math competition type of thinking.

 

 

My boys did not like the textbook samples for 3A to 3D so I didn't buy the books. For them it was the visuals (sensory issue) of the textbook that turn them off. Older has no issue with AoPS prealgebra though as it is only three colors (black text on white, light purple box, light gray box). So it really depends on why your child don't like BA.

 

I hadn't thought of that--I wonder if that's part of it. He does great with MEP which is just black and white. I can see in his eyes when we are doing BA that he is having a hard time following the train of thought. I find myself re-teaching everything on a blank piece of paper for him to get much out of it.

 

 

We have skipped every single time MEP tries to teach us Roman numerals. What is up with that? Is it some weird British obsession?

 

Ha--my son LOVES all of the Roman numerals and gets so excited when he sees them in real life.

 

Based on the experience of others I think we will try again in a bit, or skip to the next section. I'm curious to see what the rest of BA is like. My son had almost no experience with geometry, as some others have suggested maybe that is why it was a bust.

[wapiti]

My son considers himself 'mathy' and loves to think mathematically even though he does not get things quickly. I wonder, though, since BA comes from a math competition company, which is a very specific subset of mathematical thinking, if they are geared more towards quick thinkers or toward math competition type of thinking.

 

Patience (slow, deep thinking?) for problem-solving is a wonderful thing. I'm trying to develop that in my older kids. You might say that one of them, with a particularly raging case of perfectionism exacerbated by years of mad-math-minutes, is being therap-ized (patience-remediated?) with AoPS, very much against his will :lol:. He's only in ch 2 of the prealgebra, and when he's calm enough to slow down and think for a few minutes, I'm already starting to see some growth :). Getting him to slow down and use his whole brain, rather than just the back corner if he can get away with it, is something I take very seriously.

 

I agree that "math competition thinking" - problem-solving - is a subset of mathematical thinking; I might even say it is the essence of mathematical thinking.

 

When you say "quick," I think of pure arithmetic speed, which, while useful, may not be relevant to deep thinking. FWIW, "thinking" speed and processing speed (the technical term) are two different animals. I have a ds with slow processing speed who can stare at an AoPS problem for five minutes and suddenly come out with an answer without having lifted the pencil. He seems to have top-notch mental math skills. His twin brother, the one who just started, likewise has slow processing speed but has the opposite extreme habit of reflexively writing out arithmetic that he ought to be able to do mentally without effort (e.g., multiplying by powers of 10). We are in the process of fixing that :tongue_smilie:.

[stripe]

I am not sure puzzle-loving mathematical thinking is only played out in competitions. Some people don't think quickly, or in a stressful atmosphere. There have been a lot of mathematicians who have spent their life chasing one problem. Only occasionally does it work out, as in the case of Andrew Wiles. But he was up in that attic for, what, decades before he cracked Fermat's last theorem!

[Arcadia]

Patience (slow, deep thinking?) for problem-solving is a wonderful thing....... He's only in ch 2 of the prealgebra, and when he's calm enough to slow down and think for a few minutes, I'm already starting to see some growth :). Getting him to slow down and use his whole brain, rather than just the back corner if he can get away with it, is something I take very seriously.

 

:iagree: I have to remind my older that it is more haste less speed. Patience for problem solving is good for other subjects and life in general.

I have a ds with slow processing speed who can stare at an AoPS problem for five minutes and suddenly come out with an answer without having lifted the pencil.

Sounds just like my younger. I sometimes wonder if he is daydreaming and then he just shout out the answer. He is the better chess player.

[wapiti]

I am not sure puzzle-loving mathematical thinking is only played out in competitions. Some people don't think quickly, or in a stressful atmosphere. There have been a lot of mathematicians who have spent their life chasing one problem.

 

 

Absolutely. You will never see my kids in a MathCounts Countdown Round, as fun as that is to watch (holy smokes, talk about fast!!), or at least they wouldn't last long, LOL. They will never be that fast. Thankfully, that's not all there is to MathCounts and there is a variety of competitions, especially at the high school level. I'd definitely stay away from a competition focusing on speed. My dd12 enjoyed MathCounts this year, and like her brothers, she operates at a slower speed. What's interesting is that the peer dynamic is more about admiring those that do well and wanting to be like them than feeling the stress of not measuring up, or at least that's how it seemed to me. Maybe it depends on the kid. I'll have to ask dd what she thinks about both that and the speed angle with the rest of MathCounts - I don't recall her running out of time.

 

Sounds just like my younger. I sometimes wonder if he is daydreaming and then he just shout out the answer. He is the better chess player.

 

 

On a daily basis, ds gets mad at me when I say something during those moments. I interrupt his thinking and he loses all his calculations. Use a pencil once in a while, LOL.

[Ariston]

When you say "quick," I think of pure arithmetic speed, which, while useful, may not be relevant to deep thinking.

 

Sorry for the confusion, I meant quick in terms of grasping new concepts. My son enjoys puzzles and hard problems (as long as they are 'the right level of hardness'in his words) but when he is learning new things, he seems to need repeated exposure before they sink in. He does well with things like Miquon and MEP where there is not a lot of pressure to get the idea being taught right away, and the student has lots of time to tinker and figure things out.

 

I guess I was expecting more of a discovery based approach from BA. Instead they seem to favor explicit instruction, followed by problems that expand the students thinking. It seems like kids need to be able to grasp things quickly with this kind of approach (to be able to take advantage of the instruction.) (Take that opinion with a grain of salt seeing as I've only done BA for a few weeks, and only with one student.)

 

My son is not used to that type of teaching (I have done VERY little explicit instruction in math) so I'm curious to try again (maybe with the skip counting) and see if he can adjust and get something different out of it.