Beast Academy - How Long, Practice Books?

[lizbusby]

My son attends a fantastic Montessori school during the school year, but I'm looking for summer supplements. Given that we will have about 8 weeks of summer break, how much of Beast Academy could we get through (or how much should I order)?

 

He is just beginning to understand multiplication, does a lot of skip counting in school, and is fairly fluent with 3- and 4-digit addition and subtraction (90% accuracy). Hasn't done much with geometry.

 

I'm not looking to do the curriculum for super thoroughness, but to just read a chapter and play with some problems. I will probably write 3-4 related exercises on our chalkboard every morning to draw his interest, but that's probably all we'll do in terms of formal work. He tends to pick up things quickly though.

 

I was looking at the table of contents, and there seem to be only 3 chapters per book. However, the chapters seem like long chapters. If we're just goofing around for summer, could a chapter be "covered" in two weeks? A month? Or is a better unit to go by the sub-sections in each chapter?

 

And if we're just doing it "for fun" should I bother with the practice books?

[EndOfOrdinary]

This is extremely hard to say, since most of the AoPS books are not paced like a traditional textbook.  Often times the content is not set up to take a week per chapter, or a day or two per subset.  It is set up for the concepts to just be presented.  Your child might grasp one section quickly, but then stall out on the next.  Because it is a mastery approach, not spiral, it means that you can't just keep going on if the student is fuzzy.  They need to really understand, because they will be asked to apply the concept to figure out the next exercises, or the next portion of the chapter.  This might not work for the "super thoroughness" that you mentioned.  The book is sort of set up to be pretty thorough.

 

I'd shoot to do one subsection every 2 to 3 days with the relaxed style you are talking about.  Since the idea for the books is concept development, previous experience does not really guarantee understanding.  My son can crunch exponents just fine.  The AoPS exponents chapter melted his brain.  We had to spend a month on that Chapter alone (PreA book).  It was because the concept of exponents, and the depth with which the book delved into it, were not something he completely understood regardless of how well he could actually do the problems.  Exponents then appeared in Chapter 3, and Chapter 4, etc.  We couldn't just skip them and keep going.

[Crimson Wife]

Definitely get the practice books. The guidebooks are entertaining, but I wouldn't bother with BA at all unless your child actually works through the problems.

 

I would just get 3A to start off with because your child is so young. The BA books are much more challenging than the typical 3rd grade materials, so even if your child is working at a 3rd grade level in terms of the S&S, he may not have the maturity or patience to tackle BA just yet.

[crazyforlatin]

The practice books do have additional teaching material and contain all the challenging problems. With an interested child, you could actually get through 2 textbooks/2 workbooks in 8 weeks because there are actually some easy problems mixed in with the more difficult problems. I would also start out at 3A since that book took most of here by surprise. The geometry section of 3A is hard to beat.

[slackermom]

Since the BA series uses 4 sets per year (A-D), I would say each set is probably aimed at taking about 2 months.  While the guides are a great read, I think the problems in the practice books are the reason to use the series.

[lizbusby]

Definitely get the practice books. The guidebooks are entertaining, but I wouldn't bother with BA at all unless your child actually works through the problems.

 

Oh, I'm almost certain that he will work quite a lot of the problems. This is the kid who adds up prices for me in the grocery store without being asked, just because he wants to know. I'm just not going to push him for any kind of completion, because a: it's summer, and b: he's five. But I just know he will love the BA format (he prefers graphic novels to chapter books, and math is his one true love right now) and I'm worried if I wait until next summer, he'll pass by a lot of the material. He's the kind of kid who seed an idea in, and six months later it pops out fully understood and applied.

[kitten18]

I would order the 3A and 3B guides and practice books and just see how it goes. They have them at RR and there is free shipping for orders over $50.

[Crimson Wife]

I'm worried if I wait until next summer, he'll pass by a lot of the material. He's the kind of kid who seed an idea in, and six months later it pops out fully understood and applied.

While there may be a few extremely prodigious 6 y.o.'s who wouldn't get anything out of the 3rd & 4th grade BA books, I would say that there is a 99+% chance you don't have anything to worry about in that regards. The BA books are great for "out-of-the-box" thinking even when the child is familiar with the basic concepts.

[eternalsummer]

Heck, *I* enjoyed going through some of the problems in the BA books.  Granted I haven't done any math since high school calculus, but still.

[sunnyday]

Oh, I'm almost certain that he will work quite a lot of the problems. This is the kid who adds up prices for me in the grocery store without being asked, just because he wants to know. I'm just not going to push him for any kind of completion, because a: it's summer, and b: he's five. But I just know he will love the BA format (he prefers graphic novels to chapter books, and math is his one true love right now) and I'm worried if I wait until next summer, he'll pass by a lot of the material. He's the kind of kid who seed an idea in, and six months later it pops out fully understood and applied.

 

Have you looked at the sample pages available online? I'd recommend it. Reading and thinking through the balancing weights section, and the associated practice book pages also provided, were what gave me the best taste of what the books were like. (My son was able to complete that section at age 6 with a LOT of support and no small amount of crying. It took until he had the maturity that seemed to come around his 7th birthday for him to be willing to buckle down and really work through both the book and the practice book.)

[Lifebreakingin]

We just got DD 3A for her seventh birthday. She read through the entire guide last Friday (after finishing her homeschool project.) She went through some of the book again with her dad that night and is looking forward to working through the practice book. I think it's fun and challenging; they make mazes and such. But I love geometry. DD definitely understood it and could answer questions when we asked her, but obviously working through it is going to take all summer (we have a lot of humanities plans already!).

[SierraNevada]

I think DS went through the geometry section in about a month. That was when we were taking it easy at a very relaxed pace. If you want to go at a summer's pace I'd shoot for just doing 3a text and practice. The comic book portion itself can be read in one day if the child is really into it. But the problems themselves can take much longer, especially for a younger child who doesn't have as much stamina.

[wapiti]

My son attends a fantastic Montessori school during the school year, but I'm looking for summer supplements. Given that we will have about 8 weeks of summer break, how much of Beast Academy could we get through (or how much should I order)?

 

He is just beginning to understand multiplication, does a lot of skip counting in school, and is fairly fluent with 3- and 4-digit addition and subtraction (90% accuracy). Hasn't done much with geometry.

 

I have a ds5 in exactly the same situation - plenty of multi-digit addition and subtraction and has done quite a bit with the multiplication stones work in his Montessori classroom (we have been very happy with Montessori math at the primary level).  FWIW, I have no plan to get him started in BA this summer, but now that I think about it, there are some sections we might take a look at together for fun.  I'd consider him to be at least as mathy as his next oldest brother, but I don't think he's quite ready for BA.  If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't anticipate needing more than 3A for an 8-week summer; that might depend on how frequently you use it.

 

Just today, my ds7 was home sick, and we pulled out BA for the first time in ages.  He had been through the first lesson of 3A a long time ago (might have been two whole years ago IIRC, when he was finishing K), but it's not easy, and he hadn't been back.  Today we ended up jumping into 3B in the Distributive Property chapter.  I suspect we will skip a few sections here and there (he can do multi-digit multiplication and long division).  We'll need to go backwards and do perfect squares, etc.  We'll see what else.  To make a long story short, he loved it and I ended up ordering the rest of the books that are currently out (y'all know I was just waiting for a reason, LOL).  I figure I can use them eventually with one of the younger kids if ds7 should lose interest.

 

So, if you get BA and it turns out that he's not quite ready, you can just come back to it later :)

 

Eta, if you are just looking for fun, interesting math stuff to do together, you might pick up a couple of Young Math books (search Amazon prior to, say, 1980 - most are early to mid 70s, if you can still find cheap copies!  Library might also have them).  They're fun and interesting and short.  I've accumulated maybe about 15 of them.  Ds7 has really enjoyed them though my ds5 hasn't expressed interest yet - maybe we'll read some together this summer.

[lizbusby]

Eta, if you are just looking for fun, interesting math stuff to do together, you might pick up a couple of Young Math books (search Amazon prior to, say, 1980 - most are early to mid 70s, if you can still find cheap copies!  Library might also have them).  They're fun and interesting and short.  I've accumulated maybe about 15 of them.  Ds7 has really enjoyed them though my ds5 hasn't expressed interest yet - maybe we'll read some together this summer.

Thanks for the recommendation on those. We read the Roman Numerals book from the library a while ago, and DS was talking about it for days and days. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only one from the series our library owns. I'll have to put them on our list to hunt down.