Talk me through this Beast Academy

[Clarita]

My son is in Kindergarten. We are doing Singapore Math 1A right now which is "getting it done" (not that it really matters). Beast Academy just came out with level 1. To me Beast Academy looks HARD and daunting, but it's puzzle-y and my son loves puzzles. So I gave him some problems on adding from the samples today.

Here's why I need to talk it through, he actually really loves it. Today we our usual Singapore where he claimed he was too tired to do more after 2 problems. I ask if he wanted to try some BA problems (no pressure). He proceeds to do 9 BA problems which are like 5 addition problems within each problem. This is him asking to do more and more.  I thought we were going to stop after 1. 

I absolutely have my concerns about using BA with a 5 almost 6 year old, but I want to leave it open ended and ask what do you think? 

(I don't think teaching it will be a problem. I think I can handle most of it and my husband is absolutely thrilled with this sort of thing, so I'll have support if I struggle with a problem.) 

Update on first day doing BA. 

Me: Wow you did a lot of work today in Math. (I was just astonished because he did several pages of work, even asked to do one more problem when I said it's time to stop.)

DS: That's because it's easy.

We haven't gotten to any starred problems yet so we'll see. 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Clarita
Update

[Guest]

I don’t think it’s a problem if he likes it and is asking for it. Go with the flow!  If he gets frustrated, just shelve it for awhile and pull it out again in a few months.

[shawthorne44]

You are so lucky.  We were forced to wait until grade 3 to switch from Singapore to BA.  

[Guest]

Never too young to start learning math-pirate speak!

[Clarita]

I think I'll give level 1A a try. The next unit of math is somewhat unrelated to what we've been doing (addition/subtraction moving on to ordinal numbers), so it seems like a great time to switch gears. 

4 hours ago, WTM said:

If he gets frustrated, just shelve it for awhile and pull it out again in a few months.

Why do I never think that this is possible, it's not like we homeschool or anything.

[chocolate-chip chooky]

Why are you concerned?

If he enjoys the challenge and is asking for more, roll with it.

I wish this was available when my mathsy daughter was young.

[Malam]

Just curious, can he read independently yet?

And you can always supplement if you feel something hasn't been covered or if you're looking for review

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

Why are you concerned?

It seems hard. Looking at some of the problems, I know some adults who wouldn't be able to do some of them and it's only level 1. 

It's a lot of problems per lesson (or more accurately more number of the same looking problem compared to Singapore). I'm judging this by the number of Singapore problems he's able/willing to do before "he's too tired."

It seems less hands-on and has less manipulative work than Singapore.

1 minute ago, Malam said:

Just curious, can he read independently yet?

Yes, he can probably read the comics part. I don't trust him to always interact with the story or stop and answer the question before moving on in the story, so I'll likely read them with/to him.  We haven't covered all the phonics yet so while he is right 95% of the time in his non-level readers reading, 5% of the time he doesn't read the correct word (either he doesn't know the vocabulary or he used the incorrect phoneme).

[wendyroo]

For what it's worth, whenever I used Beast Academy academy with any of my kids:

1) It was always one choice among several. We always had Math Mammoth on hand, Zaccaro books, Star Wars math workbooks, Singapore CWP and Process Skills, living math books, etc. Whenever they didn't want to do Beast Academy, there was always at least one other option.

2) We did math by time, so it didn't really matter how many problems there were on a page. 

[Malam]

21 minutes ago, Clarita said:

Looking at some of the problems, I know some adults who wouldn't be able to do some of them and it's only level 1

Are you talking about the starred reflection problems? Those are pretty trial-and-error, but I don't think being able to do them is a prerequisite for anything

21 minutes ago, Clarita said:

judging this by the number of Singapore problems he's able/willing to do before "he's too tired."

Maybe he gets tired of the non-challenging repetition? I haven't used BA so I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure a year of BA has fewer problems than a year of SM with the workbooks. BA is more mastery than Singapore, so each year should have fewer lessons to counteract the greater time per lesson.

Reading the comics with him is a good idea.

Just now, wendyroo said:

Star Wars math workbooks

LOL, that sounds like a great last resort!

Edited September 28, 2022 by Malam

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, Clarita said:

t seems hard. Looking at some of the problems, I know some adults who wouldn't be able to do some of them and it's only level 1. 

It's a lot of problems per lesson (or more accurately more number of the same looking problem compared to Singapore). I'm judging this by the number of Singapore problems he's able/willing to do before "he's too tired."

It seems less hands-on and has less manipulative work than Singapore.

@Rosie_0801says, "it's good to be good at trying." If he finds it hard, you can tell him what Rosie says. It's great growth mindset.

He might be "tired" after a few singapore problems if they're boring for him. You can see how his stamina is with Beast. Like @wendyroosaid, you can go by time rather than require him to finish a lesson or a certain # of problems.

Neither of my kids really needed manipulatives in their math learning. Go figure. Every kid is different. But we did have the manipulatives available for play time (outside of math time), and I think they pick up lots of math just by playing with the manipulatives.

[chocolate-chip chooky]

42 minutes ago, Clarita said:

It seems hard. Looking at some of the problems, I know some adults who wouldn't be able to do some of them and it's only level 1. 

It's a lot of problems per lesson (or more accurately more number of the same looking problem compared to Singapore). I'm judging this by the number of Singapore problems he's able/willing to do before "he's too tired."

 

Is your concern that your child might get frustrated?

I'm sure it varies for every child, but my daughter thrived on challenge. Any frustration and weariness stemmed from lack of challenge.

We didn't have BA, but we used Zaccaro, and later AoPS. We had no set time, and no set number of problems. We treated particularly hard problems as great collaborative learning challenges, bouncing ideas off each other.

 

[Clarita]

2 hours ago, wendyroo said:

1) It was always one choice among several. We always had Math Mammoth on hand, Zaccaro books, Star Wars math workbooks, Singapore CWP and Process Skills, living math books, etc. Whenever they didn't want to do Beast Academy, there was always at least one other option.

Do you just do the next page on the other math books, or find the same topic in the other math books?

2 hours ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

Is your concern that your child might get frustrated?

Yes, and that it would turn math into drudgery and frustration. I guess what it comes down to is I feel like if this was my math as a kid I wouldn't like it. 

Currently I would go by the amount of time except he really finishes enough work (either by telling me he's too tired or he starts to zone out or we would be going on to the next lesson) before the 10 min mark where I would stop him.  

2 hours ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

I'm sure it varies for every child, but my daughter thrived on challenge. Any frustration and weariness stemmed from lack of challenge.

This could be true. 

[shawthorne44]

I still have fond memories of reading the BA comics with daughter.   Once we cured her dyslexia she wanted to read them herself, which made me a little sad.  But then she'd bring me the book for me to read the 'Bad Teacher' (you will understand when you get there), and that was good for both of us. 

Some of the problems are challenging.  But they are worked up to, and your kid will be able to solve them.  I work with mostly computer programmers, and I'd pose an occasional interesting problem to them.   They could always solve it, but it wasn't super easy.   Then I'd tell them, "This is from my daughter's Grade 2 book."   We liked BA enough that I bought the Grade 2 books as they came out.  

At your kid's age, I'd have him do some math X days a week.  If he enjoys it, you don't want to take the play out of it and make it work.  Eventually, though, I started to assign 10-12 pages per week.  I found that the easy and hard problems always evened out over a week.  

Also, those puzzles teach math concepts too.  

 

 

[wendyroo]

10 hours ago, Clarita said:

Do you just do the next page on the other math books, or find the same topic in the other math books?

Yep, and that was honestly just for my convenience. I didn't care what math they were doing every day...I mean, I'm not going to let my 4th grader "practice" one digit addition, but within reason I see a lot of value in both review and stretch topics, in both straight arithmatic and puzzles, in spiral and mastery learning, etc.

So if they got frustrated with Beast Academy and wanted to bounce over to a measurement unit in Math Mammoth for a day or a week or longer, then that was fine with me. I figured as long as they were doing math every day, that I could trust them to regulate what type of math they were ready for or interested in. And I didn't have to worry about the Math Mammoth getting too boring because they always had the option of switching to something more challenging at any time.

With my kids, what realistically happened is that they would fall into a groove of Math Mammoth for weeks or months. Then they would get bored of the routine and spend days or weeks on Beast Academy or in a Star Wars workbook or Zaccaro book. When they got frustrated or bored of that, they would switch back to Math Mammoth. I always kept a pretty close eye on their work, so if they ever came to a Math Mammoth unit that they had clearly already mastered (through another resource or through osmosis) then I would just have them do the review pages for that unit before moving on.

A couple times another pattern emerged. That was when they hit a concept that they struggled with. I had one kid who hit a wall with long division in Math Mammoth. And others that got super frustrated with Beast Academy puzzles, but in a way that I felt we should push through. Then we would spend 5 minutes or do one problem of the frustrating math together before they spent the rest of their math time on something else. We would keep up that pattern for as long as it took to get past the hurdle or for me to decide we needed to set aside that goal for the time being.

[Not_a_Number]

If he loves it, use it! Why not? 

I don't always love the teaching in BA, but as long as you can supplement it, I don't see any issue. 

[EKS]

I recommend structuring your math lessons so that he continues to think of BA something he gets away with rather than the default.  That doesn't mean that you can't think of BA as the main course, but if he thinks of it as the dessert, he will likely be more interested in it for longer.

Once you know for sure that he loves it for itself and not because it's new or not Singapore, you can probably safely move to it full time.

Disclaimer: I have never used or even seen BA beyond the online samples, so I can't comment on how appropriate it is as a primary program.