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[quote=Anonymous][quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous]Is BA a complete curriculum or supplement? Could it be used in conjunction with Khan Academy or Kumon worksheets as a complete curriculum? DC is home schooled for the time being and just wondering how thorough BA is. [/quote]
It's a full curriculum and it's pretty thorough, particularly with regard to problem solving, making lots of conceptual connections, and many challenging problems. While it does of course contain basic exercises at the beginning of each chapter/topic, some parents find that their kids needed a bit more practice on the drill type questions. For that, anything such as Kumon/random worksheets can be used.

It's important to guide/support the child, especially initially when they are not used to the feeling of being stuck and want to quickly give up if they can't think of anything in a minute. Ideally work some of the problems together with them, and read the provided hints/solutions as they're very helpful. Some parents do the problems themselves ahead of time so that they can explain/help their kids effectively when they do get stuck :) Initially it's a big step for kids (and some adults) to switch away from thinking in a very procedural fashion, but once they get used to it, it's very much worth it for the critical thinking skills.[/quote]

Thanks! I have noticed this already as we work through BA2 and am working on balancing providing support and encouraging persistence. Are the practice books useful for the extra practice over and above the online material or are you talking about a different kind of practice like memorizing basic facts and procedures? Does BA teach all the basic procedures or concepts the child would encounter on Kumon worksheets and elsewhere?[/quote]
I've only used the books and not the online while working through all of BA with my son. You can use either one they both teach the same material. Online is great, but some people have mentioned that they thought the books are just a bit harder on average. I'm not sure if this is fully true since it seems AoPS tried pretty hard to have both mediums contain pretty much the same material. My son did not struggle with the basics at the beginning, though he certainly got stuck numerous times with later problems. He is quite lucky that I can teach and explain things to him though. His biggest issue so far is that while he can grasp things pretty quickly, he tends to want to do too much in his head which can trip him up in more difficult problems. I'm slowly trying to get him to write more and to convince him that it can actually be quicker to solve a problem by writing some stuff down since it unloads a lot of stuff he has to keep in his head.

There are a few things that BA doesn't teach until later on, i.e the standard multiplication and division algorithms. They do teach how to multiply and divide, but they teach it in a way that makes logical sense. For multiplication they teach partial products way (i.e the distributive property in column format) which is super useful for really understanding place value. Kids pick that up right away but when they see the standard multiplication algorithm in school, they may stick to their partial product method because they like it. With large numbers (let's say 3 digit x 3 digit numbers) partial products can become quite cumbersome in terms of the amount of writing (and if kids don't write super neat, they may put digits in a different column and get the wrong result). In school they like to make them do large number multiplications by hand and the standard algorithm is the most efficient way of doing that in terms of the amount of writing. But this of course isn't really a big deal at all; the important part is that they have a solid conceptual understanding and aren't just memorizing an algorithm. Division is the same way; instead of teaching the standard long division algorithm, they teach a similar method that actually makes sense, which is doing division by repeatedly subtracting multiples but letting kids subtract whatever multiples they're comfortable with to reduce the original number down. So again when they're forced to do long division in school, kids may prefer to do it the BA way, and again it's fine.[/quote]

Thank you, this is all very helpful to know. We are going to do a combo of online BA + practice books (they are coming in the mail) and see how that goes. I can see that he probably needs more practice after learning some of the concepts and methods so for now I'm supplementing with more problems. He certainly enjoys puzzle time. Overall I'm feeling pretty excited about BA (my son is slightly less excited lol but we'll see how it goes). [/quote]

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