BA or Singapore CWP/IP

[twas]

Forgive me if this has already been addressed. I tried a search and didn't find an answer. I am using MM and LoF with DS7. I'm thinking of adding in a more challenging supplement because he seems to be fairly mathy, and I think he could use the challenge so that he doesn't get "lazy" because everything comes easily for him. So any opinions on which would be better out of BA, CWP, or IP? Maybe any one of them would work and I should just pick one? I'm leaning toward BA. TIA!

[GSOchristie]

I have never seen BA, but we use CWP and am going to start IP with the next book in the next few weeks (3A).  My 7 YO DS loves the CWP, they are not too challenging to him, but it does take him longer than 3 seconds to figure them out, which he enjoys :).

[Crimson Wife]

I think it would really depend on the child. BA is the most challenging of the 3, while a word problems supplement like either CWP or Fan Math Process Skills is the most useful IMHO for an average student.

[Farrar]

They're just really different things. BA has more puzzles and is a full program, the CWP is all word problems.

[hellen]

BA would be an expensive supplement and it is a full program which has already been mentioned. Doing it would make parts of another 3rd grade program redundant. Skip counting and fractions are two that immediately jump into mind.

 

Intensive Practice has a lot of problems and a lot of problems per page. It has word problems, puzzles, and regular stuff but with bigger numbers or slightly harder in some way. For example the practice book in 4A has the student finding factors of a number like 20. The IP would have a student find the factors of a number like 84. The IP book cogers one semester of math.

 

CWP is self explanatory. It covers a full year of math.

[sweetpea3829]

I have Beast, IP and CWP on my shelves...I use IP and CWP to reinforce Singapore, and I'm using Beast as a summer bridge because DS finished his Singapore year in March.  

 

I'm not really familiar with MM, but if I had to choose, I would choose Beast.  It's a full curriculum and it takes concepts deeper.  I think IP and CWP are really best if you're using the entire Singapore curriculum, but that's just my own .02.  

 

I do like the suggestion of using Fan Math Process Skills.  But again, I use that alongside Singapore.  

 

And also, I don't do all of CWP and IP during the school year.  I actually spread it out for summer review, too.  

[twas]

Thanks for all the advice. I guess I just need to think it over and print out some samples to try. I'd like to do BA, but I'm not sure I want another complete program. But we do school year round, so it might be good summer math.

[sweetpea3829]

Thanks for all the advice. I guess I just need to think it over and print out some samples to try. I'd like to do BA, but I'm not sure I want another complete program. But we do school year round, so it might be good summer math.

 

Beast is a fantastic summer bridge math.  Really, I love it for that purpose.  I wouldn't use it as a stand-alone, because I don't feel as though it has enough supportive review.  I know, I could find plenty to use to review with, but I like that Singapore has so many options, and so that's basically our math "spine".  

 

But I love Beast for summer bridge because it's "fun".  

[Roadrunner]

Beware of Beast trap. :)

More my kid uses it, more I struggle to get him to do SM. He says he hates how SM tells him what to do, as opposed to letting him work the problem before revealing how it's done. Once you Beast (I think it earned the right to be a verb in our household), it might be a struggle to do anything else.

For a mathy kid, the combination of BA and IP could be a good choice (we also work on CWP, but inky challenging sections).

[Forgiven]

I agree with Roadrunner. Be careful if you try to use Beast Academy as a supplement. I tried that at the beginning of this year, to supplement MM. My DS decided he no longer wanted to do "boring" MM, and only wanted to do BA. We made the switch and he's only looked back a couple of times. Each time he tried to do some MM, he started laughing, saying how "easy" MM is, and going right back to BA, which he claims is harder, but also much more fun.

 

I can see why some people don't think there's enough review in BA, but at the same time, my son hasn't needed extra review. I thought for sure that we'd have to go back to MM at some point to do "more" problems to cement the concepts, but we haven't as of yet. Of course, we school year-round, so DS doesn't get much of a break when it comes to math--maybe a couple of weeks over the summer.

 

 

[twas]

Well, I will be interested to see what he thinks of it. He's been through RS A & B, some of Miquon Orange, but I lost confidence with my ability to teach it, and we're in LoF Edgewood. I got the MM light blue download during the last HSBC sale. He's cruising through level 2 on our ipad. I think I'm going to do it mostly orally when we start back (we're on our way home from vacation), so that his handwriting doesn't slow him down, especially since he's using a stylus. So far it's all review, but I was afraid to skip ahead too far and miss something. He's my first, so we're pioneering this homeschool world together.

 

I don't mind paying for BA since MM was so cheap. If he decides he really likes it, I'll still have MM to add in review if I feel like he needs it. There certainly isn't a shortage of options for math out there.

[Farrar]

I can see why some people don't think there's enough review in BA, but at the same time, my son hasn't needed extra review. I thought for sure that we'd have to go back to MM at some point to do "more" problems to cement the concepts, but we haven't as of yet. Of course, we school year-round, so DS doesn't get much of a break when it comes to math--maybe a couple of weeks over the summer.

 

That's how I see it too.  It's not targeted to kids who need a ton of review.

 

That said, I do have ds do dopey math drill pages because he needs it.  But the interplay works for him to have the hard stuff and the easy stuff to trade back and forth between.

[SnegurochkaL]

I have all 3 of them: CW, IP and BA. I use IP instead of workbooks for my child. If I feel he needs some reinforcement, I assign some "regular" problems from CWR and he does all challenging from the book related to the topic he is studying. We do BA as a supplement to Russian math when they cover the same topic and as a week-end fun studies. We are a STEAM oriented family.