Combining Beast Academy, MEP, and Singapore

[poetic license]

I wonder if anyone combines elements from all 3 of these programs? I have been alternating days/weeks with BA and MEP for now. I am considering doing less of the MEP and adding in selections from IP & CWP from Singapore. Does anyone have any advice or input?

[sweetpea3829]

I combine Singapore and Beast Academy and find it to be plenty.  Adding in MEP would be overkill for us.  

[Farrar]

Doing all of any of those sounds like a lot to me since MEP and Beast are both really full programs. But doing Beast, skipping a little in MEP, adding in a little CWP or IP seems like a good plan. And, of course, it would be too much for us, but every kid is different...

[maize]

We combine BA and MM. Dd11 did MM as her main program and bits of BA as a supplement, DS9 is doing the reverse. I wouldn't attempt two full programs.

[Miss Tick]

Ha! I combine MEP and BA and had thought I might be the only one, nice to know I'm not totally alone. On Tuesdays we usually do a little Pizzazz and Math Kangaroo work. I try to reduce MEP to just the highlights, but I don't want to give it up since we will outpace BA. I'm staying to do more compression if MEP since I don't want to get too far behind, and they are both full programs. He doesn't have trouble with fact practice, so we are skipping more of those, also conversions and Roman numerals. We do one or two if the classroom exercises orally.

 

One thing I am wondering is if he can do the "multiple of 5" lessons and they go well then skip that week. They are intended to be end of the week summary/review lessons. I've just started looking at that.

[Crimson Wife]

I would pick 2 out of the 3 because even with a math-loving kid, BA + MEP + SM would be overkill. I don't think Singapore IP or CWP would add anything you're not already getting via a MEP & BA combo.

[Julie of KY]

Last year, I combined SM and Beast. This year, my daughter is continuing Beast, but doing it with MEP7. (I've gone back to SM to reinforce some fractions, but I think I'll continue MEP and Beast in general.) I'm hoping at the end of this year, she might be ready to start AoPS Prealgebra.

[SierraNevada]

We combined BA, SM, and LOF....but we skipped a lot of stuff in BA, and we don't do every problem in SM. We did one program at a time, not rotate daily. So we spent a few months going through just LOF. Then, we'd go back to SM, then, at a good breaking point, we'd stop for a few weeks to do a chapter or two in Beast. SM is most like our spine, and in BA we only do the chapters that are extra topics not seen in other programs, like the perfect squares, binary, exponents, logic puzzles, counting, and rounding-estimating. We used the other books of BA (text-comic book) just for fun reading, even if we didn't do any chapters in the workbook out of it-- like the upcoming 4C has no new topics in it for us, so we will just get the text for fun. Not rotating through the programs weekly has added a bit of review in, but since each program approaches things differently it also adds in some novelty to old topics. It has worked well so far (about ready to finish and move to Pre-a). I don't know anything about MEP, so I have no insight if that plus SM is too much and too similar. But for us, the three programs staggered has worked well. I love that we have been able to use the strengths of each program and I think it was a good move for us seeing a lot of different style problems. BA has its strength in visual, discovery approach, out of the box thinking, SM is pretty solid in just ... basic math, I guess taught the way I learned more or less and story problems, and LOF is great in real life story problem approach, seeing math being used in daily life.

[poetic license]

Oh there is no way I would do all of the programs. For now I am having my son do pretty much all of BA with selected exercises from MEP. I pick out parts from the MEP lesson plans that I find useful for him and then send him to do certain practice book exercises on his own.

 

Lately I've been feeling that he's missing the bar-model problem solving strategy of SM so that's why I've contemplated adding that in, then perhaps dropping MEP or only doing very few selected problems.

 

Is there anything else special about SM that would be worth covering?

[sweetpea3829]

If you feel like he's missing the bar model approach and that's all that you want from Singapore, than buy the Singapore supplement called Process Skills in Problem Solving.  It's ALL about the bar model, and some other problem solving approaches, as well.

 

As far as anything else unique to Singapore...I don't know...I feel like their 3rd grade curriculum is more comprehensive than Beast Academy.  Beast goes deeper, yes...and stretches you, yes...but Singapore covers a wider range of topics.  

 

But I'm not familiar with MEPs content so I have no idea if the topics you're missing in Beast would be covered in MEP...probably.  

 

I love Beast...but I don't see it as a complete curriculum.  Not really, anyways.  

[Aras]

I wouldn't use all three together.

 

We dropped SM this year in favor of MEP. We really loved the Process Skills book and those are the only parts of SM that we will continue with. MEP has a lot of cool puzzles similar to those in the SM IP books. In MEP, the 5th day of each week is supposed to be independent review work. When I print those off I put them in a separate binder as work they can do in the car or when I'm too busy to do one-on-one math. I haven't used Beast Academy with my kids so I can't say anything about that. 

[poetic license]

 

I love Beast...but I don't see it as a complete curriculum.  Not really, anyways.  

 

What do you feel is missing? 

 

I've had this vague feeling of missing things since starting BA (we did SM in the past) but I can't put my finger on it exactly. I miss the regular, progressively harder mental math and the step-by-step instructions for how to do it, the bar models, and the general scope of the curriculum. I haven't yet sat down with a detailed S&S to see what differs though, and I only have 3A-3C of Beast so far. However, I do really appreciate the visual-spatial lessons with Beast Academy. I am quite weak in that area and I like that my son is getting a lot of exposure to those types of problems.

[redsquirrel]

I use a combination of BA as our primary math program, and follow a bit behind with SM challenging word problems. So he starts his math day by completing 3-4 problems in the CWP book and then moves to BA. The CWP are more of a review of what has already been done in BA. One of the nice things about Common Core is that because both SM and BA are aligned I know that both cover roughly the same subjects in the same grade.

 

I can see pulling in MEP, which I love. I really like those questions at the beginning of MEP lessons. I have considered looking at the S&S of MEP and seeing how I could pull in elements, but it just seems like so much work.

 

I understand wanting to keep MEP in there, and if BA didn't exist I think I would have switched ds2 over last year. Last year I moved him from SM to BA. But because I see a lot of similarities in how BA and MEP approach math I personally wouldn't use both extensively. I think...... See? Every time I think of MEP I get all excited about it, lol.

[sweetpea3829]

What do you feel is missing? 

 

I've had this vague feeling of missing things since starting BA (we did SM in the past) but I can't put my finger on it exactly. I miss the regular, progressively harder mental math and the step-by-step instructions for how to do it, the bar models, and the general scope of the curriculum. I haven't yet sat down with a detailed S&S to see what differs though, and I only have 3A-3C of Beast so far. However, I do really appreciate the visual-spatial lessons with Beast Academy. I am quite weak in that area and I like that my son is getting a lot of exposure to those types of problems.

 

Well, off the top of my head, Singapore 3 has a whole unit on Graphs and Tables, but Beast 3 does not.  

 

I feel like Singapore is more thorough overall.  Like I said...Singapore gives breadth and Beast gives depth.  Which is funny because, when I compare Singapore to say, MUS, Singapore gives much greater depth.  

[Farrar]

Well, off the top of my head, Singapore 3 has a whole unit on Graphs and Tables, but Beast 3 does not.  

 

I feel like Singapore is more thorough overall.  Like I said...Singapore gives breadth and Beast gives depth.  Which is funny because, when I compare Singapore to say, MUS, Singapore gives much greater depth.  

 

I think Beast is complete for some kids. Graphs and tables is a unit that seems completely beyond pointless to me. Neither of my kids are the brightest bulbs sometimes and yet they still found those beyond easy. Even the CWP graphs and tables chapters were too easy for them and the CWP was NEVER too easy for them. I think most of the stuff I see in SM or MM or the like that's not covered in Beast is on that level. It's stuff that, if you can get the Beast problems, you can get or have already gotten. So maybe some people need some of those topics taught explicitly, but not the kids that Beast is really targeted towards.

OP, seconding Process Skills in Problem Solving. I think the problems are better written and, more to the point, it explicitly teaches the bar diagram methods much more clearly than the CWP.

[Soror]

I think Beast is complete for some kids. Graphs and tables is a unit that seems completely beyond pointless to me. Neither of my kids are the brightest bulbs sometimes and yet they still found those beyond easy. Even the CWP graphs and tables chapters were too easy for them and the CWP was NEVER too easy for them. I think most of the stuff I see in SM or MM or the like that's not covered in Beast is on that level. It's stuff that, if you can get the Beast problems, you can get or have already gotten. So maybe some people need some of those topics taught explicitly, but not the kids that Beast is really targeted towards.

OP, seconding Process Skills in Problem Solving. I think the problems are better written and, more to the point, it explicitly teaches the bar diagram methods much more clearly than the CWP.

Yes, we were doing Horizons for review and at first I thought it good because it had these little things in it that BA didn't have but it was really busy work that ds was able to get with little if any explanation. It seems to me that AoPS is generally considered to make great and thorough math programs so I've got a bit of faith that what they are covering is more than sufficient. Not to say some kids won't need more practice, review or different explanations at times but I think the content is good.

[CAtoVA]

I combine SM and MEP and it works very well for my DD (1st grade)—in fact better than with SM alone which I had done previously. I have never used Beast Academy so I can't speak about that. I find it very easy to stop SM where I think my DD needs more and different emphasis and start up with MEP then go back to Singapore. Not a problem for us at all and keeps math fresh and fun.