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Beast Academy Review?


coastalfam
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I have my 4th grader going through Beast Academy level 3 as a way to enrich and expand the skills we learn in our main math program. Right now we are in the Perfect Squares chapter, and will be moving on to Distributive Property. So I'm really pleased with his puzzling these math problems out and wrapping his mind around them, and boy does he enjoy the books, but there seems to be no review of prior learning, unless it is a more basic concept like skip counting, which builds to multiplication. I get the concepts build on each other a bit, but I don't know if he will remember how to calculate the square number of larger numbers that end in 5 the easy way, for example, if he does not have opportunities to review that concept ever so often. I'm curious how other parents handle this for their children using BA. 

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This is one of the only flaws with BA, imo.  My son completed the Perfect Squares chapter years ago and, sure enough, he quickly lost that math skill.  And it's not like I could just go online and find some supplemental worksheets or games to practice that skill, kwim?

 

For awhile, I hand-wrote some problems for him but, with four kids schooling, that got old real fast.

 

Beast Academy IS coming out with an online Academy and supposedly, it will address this lack of review by providing online games, practice, etc.  It should be out in early 2018.

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This is one of the only flaws with BA, imo.  My son completed the Perfect Squares chapter years ago and, sure enough, he quickly lost that math skill.  And it's not like I could just go online and find some supplemental worksheets or games to practice that skill, kwim?

 

For awhile, I hand-wrote some problems for him but, with four kids schooling, that got old real fast.

 

Beast Academy IS coming out with an online Academy and supposedly, it will address this lack of review by providing online games, practice, etc.  It should be out in early 2018.

 

Thank you. We both (son and I) love Beast too much to not do it, so I suppose chapters like Perfect Square will just be lost skills until he picks it back up in a later curriculum, which is too bad. I recently became aware of the Online Beast Academy in the works, and am so excited about it (maybe as excited as my son). I do hope it solves the issue of review for kiddos who need it. :)

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I think you have to see that stuff as doing two things. One, building a deeper understanding of math in the moment - either of problem solving generally or of the topic at hand. And two, as being a little like the various minutiae in SOTW or the like - the majority of it won't stick, but it'll ring a bell later.

 

We're unaccustomed to math programs doing this sort of thing - I think we see it in history, science, geography, religion, etc. programs for elementary school pretty commonly. I also took awhile to wrap my head around it. It would be nice if there was a little more review at some point, but overall, I decided it's fine - at least for the sort of kid that Beast is suited for in the first place. 

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Yeah, I've decided that a lot of the tricks that they show are more to practice the basic math in a more interesting way and with deeper math thrown in. So for the perfect square chapter, they not only teach some nifty tricks for perfect squares, but also practice their multiplication, addition, and area skills. However, that's not obvious because we (and the child) are focusing on the perfect square aspect. At any given point they are learning/practicing on multiple levels at once.

I haven't completely moved over to BA yet, although dd6 will be finishing Miquon in the next month or so and I plan on turning it into our primary curriculum at that point. I plan on using Prodigy for a lot of the practice and possibly some MEP or MM (which I already have on hand) for possible needed supplementing. I do wish there was some more obvious built-in or optional review, but hopefully the online BA will provide some of that.

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I think you have to see that stuff as doing two things. One, building a deeper understanding of math in the moment - either of problem solving generally or of the topic at hand. And two, as being a little like the various minutiae in SOTW or the like - the majority of it won't stick, but it'll ring a bell later.

 

We're unaccustomed to math programs doing this sort of thing - I think we see it in history, science, geography, religion, etc. programs for elementary school pretty commonly. I also took awhile to wrap my head around it. It would be nice if there was a little more review at some point, but overall, I decided it's fine - at least for the sort of kid that Beast is suited for in the first place.

This. Just hitting "like" wasn't enough. This is the same reason I handed my kid the entire set of Murderous Maths, too - she doesn't need to "get" and retain it all; it's awesome that she wants to read it and try things out, and chances are good it will make everything more approachable when she actually needs it.

 

Does it matter if my kid remembers this method of computing squares ending in 5? No, not at all. It's interesting to be able to learn it and see it, and see how the numbers conceptually fit together. We did that chapter about a year ago, and it hasn't been needed since. However, we went to hear Art Benjamin speak (the prof who does Great Courses math lectures including Secrets of Mental Math), and we learned together a trick for computing the square of any number. It works for the ones ending in 5, too. ;) Plus, Beast explained it pictorially, and the speaker explained it algebraically, so now she's come across two different ways to conceptualize the problem. Yay!

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There's very little obvious review, but there is a surprising amount of indirect review snuck into the problem sets.  There will be opportunities to use the little tricks here and there in problems later on, and the topics do really build on themselves, for the most part.  These are not often obvious, but a kid who remembers to use the various strategies will find that the practice problems go more quickly.  One who doesn't can still get through them just fine (my DS#1 did 3C-5C without having done 3A or 3B).   There's a nice chunk of problems in the BA 5D chapter on square roots that directly reviews the content in BA 3's perfect squares chapter.

 

I agree with the PPs in that it doesn't really matter if a lot of these extra, interesting-but-not-typically-taught things stick long term.  They make math seem less repetitious, develop problem solving skills, and hang hooks for later learning.

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I think you have to see that stuff as doing two things. One, building a deeper understanding of math in the moment - either of problem solving generally or of the topic at hand. And two, as being a little like the various minutiae in SOTW or the like - the majority of it won't stick, but it'll ring a bell later.

 

We're unaccustomed to math programs doing this sort of thing - I think we see it in history, science, geography, religion, etc. programs for elementary school pretty commonly. I also took awhile to wrap my head around it. It would be nice if there was a little more review at some point, but overall, I decided it's fine - at least for the sort of kid that Beast is suited for in the first place. 

 

Ah, yes, good point!

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Is the point to memorize a creative algorithm for solving the problem (e.g. recall the "trick" for squaring numbers ending in 5) or to develop deep understanding and problem solving so that the student does not have to rely on any given algorithm and can figure out a way to solve the problem? I'm for the latter.

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I just started Beast with DD. Oh how I wish it had been out when my DS's were younger!!! At least I get to enjoy it with her, though!

 

ETA- Sorry. I realize I just gushed in the wrong thread. You were specifically talking about review of concepts in the program, not a review of the program! Sorry. Shouldn't be clicking around while waiting for DD to finish cursive!

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I just started Beast with DD. Oh how I wish it had been out when my DS's were younger!!! At least I get to enjoy it with her, though!

 

ETA- Sorry. I realize I just gushed in the wrong thread. You were specifically talking about review of concepts in the program, not a review of the program! Sorry. Shouldn't be clicking around while waiting for DD to finish cursive!

 

That's okay! I totally feel the same about BA. It is an amazing program, and so fun to watch my son work really hard on math, and love it. ;)

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