IXL vs. Khan Academy vs. Beast Academy?

[Anonymous]

Hi there, trying to find a way to help my 4th grader who has a keen interest but is at a school that doesn't do differentiated instruction find opportunities to pursue her interest in math. It seems like Beast Academy might be more math competition type games and questions where as IXL seems to have an assessment, which might be a useful tool to figure out exactly where she is and what she needs (as opposed to my current gauge, which is "math is so easy at school, I finished and then I'm bored" which doesn't really tell me anything).

Anyone use these tools? Can you share pros and cons? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

We’ve used all three at various times.

Beast Academy: This is a complete math curriculum with both a comic book style text and workbook. It doesn’t really matter if you are reviewing material in it, as every chapter starts basic and gets very thoughtful and challenging. It’s my favorite of the three, by far, for enrichment, but it almost requires a degree of parental involvement. It’s hands down the most fun for kids that enjoy math as it contains a variety of games, puzzles, and challenges in addition to
Pure calculation.

Khan Academy: Khan is good for preteaching or review, as it contains teaching videos, problem explanations, and is pretty easy to navigate to specific topics. Like IXL,
It’s 100% online. It’s broad, but not very deep. I’d use it if your kid was having trouble on a particular concept. You can rework sections, but, if you just work through it, you only complete 5 or 6 problems of a particular problem type.

IXL: this was assigned by our school a few years ago, and our least favorite. I think there is some teaching material in there, but it’s mostly drill, drill, drill. It was great, for us, for multiplication tables and other pure rote tasks, but not a good enrichment tool.

[Anonymous]

+1 for beast academy

[Anonymous]

Beast Academy is what you want. It will help your child form a deep, solid understanding of the regular math concepts and encourage higher level problem solving. It's more of a side effect of the program for kids to become good at math competitions, but it isn't the focus.

[Anonymous]

We found that IXL was more reinforcing and drilling what was already learned vs. new learning.

[Anonymous]

IXL is more for review but if you have a motivated child, they can skip ahead of their grade level and learn new material on their own.

[Anonymous]

OP here, thanks, this is super helpful. Explains why when I asked our teacher she said--do IXL--and seemed puzzled at my asking about other things. But I think she was thinking of a resource that would tell us what is coming in the next grade--i.e., the sorts of stuff she might do if we lived somewhere with acceleration.

Do any/all of them have some sort of general assessment tool where they tell you where to start? What I find overwhelming in looking at these tools is that they have tons of modules, but I'm not sure where I should have my child start diving in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thanks, this is super helpful. Explains why when I asked our teacher she said--do IXL--and seemed puzzled at my asking about other things. But I think she was thinking of a resource that would tell us what is coming in the next grade--i.e., the sorts of stuff she might do if we lived somewhere with acceleration.

Do any/all of them have some sort of general assessment tool where they tell you where to start? What I find overwhelming in looking at these tools is that they have tons of modules, but I'm not sure where I should have my child start diving in.

I’m the first poster. Don’t laugh, but if you do Beast Academy, I’d start with third grade. You might move pretty quickly through some of the basics, but every chapter will get to a challenging place. You could even just pick up the textbooks and read through them with your kid. The characters in the text will work through difficult problems and you should be able to tell if it’s easy for your kid or if spending some time in the workbook will have value.

With IXL and khan, reviewing material you’ve mastered at school will be a waste (but it’s very low stakes... if a topic is reputation, just click past it)
With Beast, you are buying the material. But, for example, my daughter (4th) is coincidentally doing fractions in Beast while she is doing them in school. In school, their last test maxed out at adding fractions with like denominators and a completely rote algorithm for multiplying and dividing. In Beast, she worked through “If you take 4/5 of my favorite number and add 2 1/2 you get my magic number. What is it?” (Remember... no algebra!) And “explain why dividing two whole numbers sometimes give you a fraction and sometimes another whole number? Can dividing a whole number by a unit fraction ever give you a fraction? Why or why not?”

[Anonymous]

My kids started with Beast in 3rd. The website for the books is here: https://beastacademy.com/books For each book, there's a sample as well as a pre-test to see whether your child is ready for the content of the book.

There are a few different options to approach Beast Academy. You could just buy books and only do things that way. If you do the online subscription, you'll have access to all of the guidebooks and all of the content from 2nd-5th grade. This would let your DD review weaker topics from earlier grades, but then focus more on the 5th grade content.

If you're local to any of the AoPS academy schools, you might want to look into their enrichment classes. If you're at all local to the DC area, they have classes in Gaithersburg MD and Vienna VA.

[Anonymous]

We've been using a combination of all three. Sure, I love BA. It's fun and deep, but it doesn't contain drills per se. It's very easy to reinforce topics from there with IXL or KA.

[Anonymous]

Not a fan of IXL, heard Beast wasn't too bad. We use Khan once in awhile and also Beestar.

[Anonymous]

never heard of beast but with khan and ixl, i would say ixl l is better

[Anonymous]

Beats beats all
i like beast

[Anonymous]

Another vote for Beast Academy. You also might want to order the Murderous Maths series for fun

[Anonymous]

Ive never used beast before but between ixl and khan academy its hands down khan academy. When I was using ixl, I would get to 99, make a keyboard error, and go back down to 80. If I make a keyboard error in Khan academy, it tells me that it doesn't understand so I can correct it. That is only one of the reasons khan academy is better than ixl.