What Would You Like To Read?

I saw someone on a message board wondering what people would like to see in a homeschooling blog. The answer was honest, detailed reviews of curriculum. With so many blogs being monetized nowadays, the vast majority of reviews are from people who were provided a curriculum free in exchange for a review, and they may have only used it for a couple of lessons (if that) before posting about it, which makes for a lot of very enthusiastic, but shallow, reviews out there. I've also found this frustrating when I'm looking for more information, so I'll try to post a few more in-depth reviews, like my last post on Beast Academy.

I write this blog as a way to organize my thoughts and contribute to a homeschooling community that has been so supportive of us. What else would people like to hear about? What would be helpful or interesting to you as you read? More about curricula? Day-to-day details? (I warn you, they're pretty boring!) Organization? Giftedness and asynchrony? Something else?

Beast Academy Review

We've been all done with Beast Academy for several months now, and I don't think I've ever written any type of review about it. So, here I go.

Beast Academy is designed for kids who think of math in concepts instead of in algorithms. This is often phrased as "advanced math kids" but I'm not so sure that's the correct description. It is true that a lot of kids who think of math in concepts may be advanced, but they may also have struggled so much with traditional algorithm-focused programs that they are behind.

If you're not sure what it means for a math program to be focused on concepts, here's an example. When it comes to multiplication, an algorithm-based program will focus on multiplication tables and practice/memorization of them. A concept-based program will focus on what multiplication is (basically, an array) and how to move that array about so that the numbers can be easily manipulated. So the x4 tables aren't necessarily memorized, but they will be understood easily as the same as doubling and doubling again, or x5 and minus one of the numbers.

There are two books for each level: the guide book and the practice book. The guide book is a colorful comic in which a group of math beasts work together to learn new concepts and, eventually, compete in a math competition. We see the beasts struggle, we see them get problems wrong, and we see them figure things out by using each of their different strengths. This is excellent modeling for partnering with your child on the more difficult problems, and for kids to see how to struggle productively. All of the teaching is done in the guide books, and The Kid found these so fun that she took them to bed with her as reading material and still hangs on to them even though she's finished with the program.

The practice book is black and white. It often has a beast at the beginning of each section, and word problems will refer back to things in the beasts' world, but there is no comic format to the practice. A section of practice will usually start with a few straightforward questions and then move on to more challenging or puzzle-type problems. A common complaint I've seen about the program is that it does not have enough practice. We did not find this to be true; it had plenty of practice problems for The Kid. (The exception being in practicing multi-digit multiplication and division, for which I did supply extra practice.) There are excellent solution guides in the back of each book that not only give the answers but walk you through how to do each problem in a step-by-step manner. These guides make it possible for both mathy and non-mathy parents to use the program.

The books are challenging. We chose to use Beast Academy only about three days per week on average. The other days, we took a break and did less challenging math such as (easier) math puzzles, math games, competition math practice, reading mathy books like Sir Cumference, and other such things. At this pace, level 3 took The Kid about one calendar year to complete. It looked like level 4 was going to take about the same amount of time when The Kid suddenly accelerated her pace greatly and flew through the content of the rest of level 4 and all of level 5.

We love Beast Academy. It's a very strong program and gets more advanced with each year. Level 3 is mostly 3rd grade material with some more advanced topics. Level 4 is 4th grade, but adds in quite a bit of 5th/6th grade material. Level 5 gets advanced enough that The Kid was able to skip pre-Algebra and move directly into Algebra upon completion.