Seek help on planning transition from Beast to AoPS

[TrustAndLove]

DD9 is a self learner. She is planning to finish grade 5 Khan on her own by end of this summer. At the same time, she is working on grade 4 Beast. I am currently doing a long term plan to see how she can move from Beast to AoPS next summer. I have no idea about which AoPS class to attend and in which format. DD9 does not attend a regular lecture based school, thus she might still need Khan to lay a foundation. She has been doing the Khan and Beast combo, and it has worked out well for her: she likes it so much that she uses Khan to relax herself. Should we also consider Khan and AoPS combo? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Kathy in Richmond]

It's difficult to give advice without really knowing your child 🙂 I'm a big fan, though, of not changing what's working well. So if Khan + Beast is working, I'd certainly keep going with that combo.

As for when to move on to AoPS prealgebra, and which (if any) AoPS class to take, have you seen this advice from their site:

What's Next after Beast Academy? 

Keep in mind that AoPS has a new self-paced option for prealgebra. Since your dd is on the young side, it might be a good way to transition into the online classes. She could still take advantage of teacher helps (like office hours and discussion boards and graded writing problems) while moving at a comfortable pace.

AoPS Self-Paced Prealgebra

Good luck!

 

 

[El...]

Dd11 did all of Beast 3-5 and then moved right into AOPS Prealgebra.  She's doing it book-only, not online. It's gone really well for her so far! She's done half the book for 6th grade. We have not used Khan academy.

One thing that we started in Beast 5 which has helped was doing math for a set time rather than a number of pages or problems. She does 90 minutes a school day, and some days that's three challenging problems. I love seeing her perseverance, and Beast really built that, especially the 5th grade materials.

[wendyroo]

DS was in a similar situation.  He finished Math Mammoth 6, Beast 5 and the Hands on Equation word problem book when he was about 8.5.  From the HOE work, I knew that his biggest stumbling blocks would not be math, but rather stamina, focus, attention to detail, transferring problems from the book, showing his work, etc.  I decided to start him on AOPS prealgebra without the class so that he could move at his own pace and we could take the time to reinforce good math habits.  It took him about 18 months to make it through prealgebra using the book, videos and alcumus.  That system seemed to serve him well, so we are now continuing onto AOPS algebra the same way.

One thing that was important to remember with DS was that he could really only deal with an age-appropriate amount of math each day even though he was significantly advanced in content.  At age 8 he was only working on math for 20ish minutes a day.  Now, at age 10, 30-40 minutes is typical.  I certainly could push him to do more, and if he was enrolled in an AOPS class I would probably have to, but his accuracy and efficiency wane significantly and the going gets very tough.

[gracefamilydoc]

I haven't read above replies thoroughly.  AoPS Prealgebra has videos you can use to teach many of the topics.  And the text is written to the student so that they can self teach. You might consider not enrolling in a class and just learning from the book and videos.  Unless you really need to provide a grade or something like that?  DD is 11 in AoPS Prealgebra  transitioned this year from MEP 6.  DS is 9 in BA 4.  I think the transition from BA to AoPS should not be terribly difficult and if she's already self teaching BA, if you do not need a grade, I would think AoPS Prealgebra with the videos would be fine.  That way you are not tied in to the pace of a class.