Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Beast Academy for the not so math loving?

DS8 has dyslexia/dysgraphia. He struggles with rote memorization and has developed a "I'm no good at math" attitude over time. Back when he was tested, his Math Reasoning on the WIAT was pretty good (95th percentile) but math is definitely low on his favorite subjects list.

His favorites are all science, coding and the fairly difficult logic problems his teacher assigns him.

For those who have Beast Academy experience, how do you think it would fit for a kid like him?

He attends a small private school and we have a lot of control over his curriculum. If we bought it, his teachers would use it with him.

I would think good appeal. Like AoPS, Beast Academy is strong on conceptual understanding and therefore minimized memorization. It's likely to take him deeper and into more complex math than other curriculum.

Most kids love the graphic novel approach (dyslexic/ probably dysgraphic DD9 loves to just read the books for fun - and she doesn't like math at all). However, some kids hate the busy presentation and prefer their math clean and straightforward, or are turned off by the talking monsters storyline. There are sample pages on the website you could use to see if the format is inherently appealing to him.

Honestly, I would buy a pair of books and try it out. DD8 loves science and logic puzzles, but thinks she is bad at math and has been unable/unwilling to memorize most of her math facts. She *hated* BA. The comic book format was fine (and in fact she did like reading the books), but she found the workbook to be too much.

Curious if you found a math curriculum that works.

BA was just "okay" for him. I think a lot of his issues had to do with how it was implemented at his school last year. The teachers were excited about it at first and were spending time on it. Then they switched to him using it independently but didn't spend a lot of time on it with him in class. He struggled with the problems and did not enjoy it. He only completed 3A. I wouldn't buy it again for him.