🧮 The Best PreK-12th Grade Math Curriculum for Homeschoolers
Our favorite K12 math websites, apps, games and physical curriculum for parents learning at home with kids.
Choosing a math program is a highly personal choice for each family. A child’s learning preferences, special needs, natural talent or aversion to math (as well as a parent’s own preference for instructing their child or pursuing a more student-directed route) play greatly into the choice of curriculum. Families have varying levels of comfort with screen time. Some children excel with digital apps, while others need hands-on materials to get engaged. Fortunately, there are superb math curricula available for every learning need, ranging from game-based digital apps to nature-based curriculum. Our team has spent seven years, and involved hundreds of experts (math professors, data scientists, teachers, homeschool parents) in choosing the best curriculum available today for every learner.
These top 10 math curriculum are designed to make it easy for any parent to help their child learn math and love math.
There’s no perfect math program for every child, so we included an ideal child archetype with each curriculum option to help you determine if it could be a good fit for yours.
How we tested
Parents. We reviewed feedback from over 100,000 homeschool parents, many of whom were teachers.
Mathematicians & math educators. We consulted with mathematicians, data scientists and math educators, many of whom have kids.
Teachers. Our own teachers tried dozens of different math programs from our initial selection, reviewing them for pedagogical approach and accuracy.
Students. We observed over 500 students representing nine different learning profiles trying the math programs.
What we looked for
Mastery-Based. In mastery-based learning, the curriculum is designed where concepts are ordered in a way that makes sense for learning and students move forward at their own pace with the right level of challenge, mastering one concept before moving on to the next.
Conceptual vs procedural. Programs focused more on helping kids develop deep understanding of mathematics and problem-solving, rather than rote memorization.
Fun and Engaging. Learning is a joy, not a chore. When we tested this curriculum with them, kids immediately got engaged and asked to use the app or do the lessons as much as possible.
Scientifically Accurate. The curriculum we use does not have factual errors and is based on scientific understanding. Answers to math problems are correct.
Secular. There is no religious content or religious references.
Easy for parents to use with kids. Even if a parent struggled with math themselves or has low-confidence in teaching ability, it’s easy and clear on how to guide children’s learning.
Good user experience. If it’s an app, it’s not buggy and straightforward to use. If it’s a physical curriculum, it’s easy for parents, caregivers and kids to follow instructions.
Complete Curriculum. Everything you need to learn math at home with kids.
Aligned with US school standards. Even if the math curricula we chose doesn’t specifically follow common core, students learn the skills they need to stay at (or exceed grade level).
From this, we chose these 10 mastery-based curricula that we believe will provide a solid math foundation and accelerate children’s learning, whether they’re a budding mathematician on track to their first Field’s Medal or struggling in math due to confidence, aversion or special needs such as dyscalculia.
Remember, there’s no perfect math curriculum for any child. What’s important is to find what works best for yours.
These are our favorites. To see specific recommendations for each learning profile, check out our post on cognitive diversity.
A note about affiliate links: A few of the curriculum we recommend here have affiliate links. That means when you follow the link in the highlight box and purchase their curriculum, Modulo receives a small referral commission. (You do not pay any extra). Affiliate links do not impact our recommendations or choice of curriculum here. We chose all these programs before we requested to develop a partnership with them. All curricula we have active affiliate relationships with are marked with a star(*) in their title.
1. Top choice overall
Beast Academy Online (K-8th)
Also our top choice for gifted and profoundly gifted kids, kids on the spectrum and kids with dyslexia.
Child archetype: Enjoys apps, games, videos, comic books and funny characters, has some counting and addition ability, embraces a challenge, has mid-high math confidence.
Not a fit for: Kids with low math confidence, easily frustrated, dyscalculia, does not enjoy videos and online activities, most toddlers and preschoolers.
Beast Academy online is one of the only truly adaptive, mastery-based, digital math curricula we’ve tried that kids love as much as we do. Created by two award-winning math team coaches to help revive math as a creative discipline (not a hateful chore), this comprehensive K-8th curriculum includes 20,000+ problems, puzzles, and activities and 1000+ lessons. Rather than simply teaching kids how to memorize facts they need for standardized tests, Beast Academy encourages children to learn to solve problems and develop sophisticated spatial and symbolic thinking skills. Kids who love video games and comic books will especially gravitate towards this program. While developed for gifted math students, we’ve found that many students with ADHD and on the spectrum also thrive with this program.
Students with dyscalculia may have more difficulty with Beast Academy Online and if you find your child is not enjoying the program or getting easily frustrated, we recommend trying another option. Most families we’ve worked with prefer the online version to the books. Beast Academy is $15/month or $96/year for the online version.
Budget alternative: Prodigy Game
Preschool alternative: Homer*
Non-screen alternative: Right Start Math* or Beast Academy Books
High school option: Art of Problem Solving
Listen to (or watch) our interview with Richard Rucsyck, co-founder of Beast Academy Online.
2. Best physical curriculum
Right Start Math (PreK-12th)*
Also top non-screen-alternative for gifted kids, and top choice for kids with Dyscalculia, ADHD, or Autism.
Child archetype: Loves hands-on learning, blocks, legos, sensory tables, anything kinesthetic. They may be gifted or struggle with attention issues. No prior math experience necessary.
Not a fit for: Kids who prefer traditional workbooks and dislike hands-on learning, parents who don’t have time to sit with kids and guide learning. High school options are provided via other companies and are not as kinisthetic, but still high quality.
For families who shy away from screen time, Right Start Math is an ideal choice for kinesthetic learners, combining games, visuals and its famous two-sided abacus to help cultivate deep understanding in students, rather than rote memorization. Developed by Montessori Teacher and Curriculum Developer Dr. Joan Cotter, Right Start is a favorite among families with gifted students, and can be a great choice for kids with ADHD due to its strong emphasis on hands-on activities. Right Start Math is designed for kids to navigate with the support of a parent or caregiver, and it’s highly recommended that parents purchase the home instructor’s guide to accompany lessons. Right Start Math is a bit pricier than other options, but families can often find discounted or free curricula in homeschool groups or on sites like eBay or the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op.
The website can be a bit complex to navigate, so we’ve created a guide for parents to help select the level and materials that work best for them. Right Start has levels, rather than traditional grades so families will want to take the placement test to determine where to start or consult our guide.
Budget alternative: See used curriculum groups, eBay or the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op.
High school options are provided via partnerships with Art of Problem Solving, Jacob’s and VideoText.
3. Best Nature-Based Curriculum
Wild Math (K-5th)*
Also our top choice for kids with ADHD.
Child Archetype: is physically active, loves playing outdoors, and/or caring for plants and animals
Not a fit for: Parents who prefer online learning or don’t have time to prep or guide children’s learning.
Learning in nature can help kids develop self-confidence, physical health, learn about sustainability and build a healthy attachment style. Special education teacher and homeschool mom Rachel Tidd developed Wild Math for her own kids when she saw them thrive in an outdoor forest preschool. Wild Math is a digital download that parent’s use as a guide. Each day includes a lesson and materials that can be easily found outdoors (and do not need to be purchased). Wild Math is a great option for any family who wants to bring learning outdoors, and a phenomenal choice for kids with ADHD who frequently excel with outdoor learning. The curriculum includes creative exercises which make it easy to use in an urban or rural environment. Families should be aware that Wild Math does require a high level of parent or caregiver involvement, but one hour a day is plenty of time to help kids master math skills way above grade level. Use the code: “Modulo” for a 10% discount
Middle and high school option: Unfortunately, there is no middle or high school nature-based math program we recommend at this time. AoPS math books are. a good choice for families who prefer a physical to a digital curriculum.
Listen to our interview with Rachel Tidd, founder of Wild Learning
4. Best Standards-Aligned/Budget Pick
Prodigy Game (K-8th)
Also our best free math curriculum, and top choice for kids with low confidence or an aversion to math.
Child archetype: Enjoys apps, video games, mid to low math confidence.
Not a fit for: Advanced, gifted or profoundly gifted children who are bored with math at school.
While created to support kids with math at school, we’ve found Prodigy to be an excellent choice as a highly accessible math curriculum that stands on its own. By starting with problems, and taking advantage of the superb explanatory videos, kids can develop all the skills they need to excel in math. Kids can sign in to compete with friends in their class (or homeschool group) or work independently through problems, unlocking prizes and incentives as they go. If students miss problems, they continue to get more problems in that area until they’ve fully mastered the skill set. Prodigy is an exceptional choice for students who have low confidence or aversion to math. While Prodigy doesn’t have the same emphasis on in-depth understanding as Beast, Right Start or Wild Math, it is fully aligned with state standards so it’s a good option for parents who want to make sure kids are at grade level or help prepare them for standardized tests. The play “at school” option ensures kids are only able to communicate with others in their class or homeschool group. The free version is exceptional, but families can purchase a premium membership for more features that allow them to track student progress.
Preschool alternative: Homer
Non-screen alternative: Right Start Math
High school option: IXL*
5. Best choice for early learners
Homer* (followed by Math Tango) Toddler-2nd
Child archetype: Preschool or kindergartner with no prior math exposure who enjoys apps, video games and cartoons
Not a fit for: Advanced preschoolers with prior math exposure, hands-on learners, little kids who haven’t show interest in hard skills like math and reading.
Homer is an adaptive early learning app for children ages 2-8, with the mission of bringing early education available to all students through digital technology. In contrast to most early learning apps we’ve tried, Homer is easy for kids to use and can keep them engaged for longer periods. It’s provides a solid intro math concepts via its engaging, sequential games that kids can personalize to fit preferences such as princesses or monsters, teaching kids about number sense, counting and other prerequisites. Young kids need a lot of interaction with their primary caregivers, so we recommend families engage with kids while they’re using the app, rather than using it as a form of entertainment or distraction. Also, remember that it’s perfectly fine to wait until kindergarten or first grade to start learning academic skills; learning earlier does not necessarily equate to better or deeper understanding later in a child’s life.
Budget alternative: Prodigy Game
Non-screen alternative: Wild Math
Follow with: Math Tango, then Beast Academy Online
6. Most fun out-of-the-box math practice
Math Tango (K-5th)
Child archetype: Enjoys apps and video games, cartoon characters
Not a fit for: Kids or families who dislike screen time, videos, apps.
Math Tango is a highly engaging, sequential app for K-5th grade focused on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, aligned with common core and easy to use on the go. Founded by a team of techies and parents who wanted to make learning fun for their own kids, Math Tango is our top choice for an app that makes learning ridiculously fun indeed. While Math Tango probably can’t be used as a core curriculum past age 7, it’s a great way to start learning math, reinforce learning, practice multiplication tables or simply keep kids learning on a long road trip. Many kids in our own community started with Homer, moved on to Math Tango, then Prodigy and then started with Beast Academy when they were ready to take their skills to the next level.
Budget alternative: Prodigy Game
Preschool alternative: Homer
Non-screen alternative: Right Start Math or Wild Math
Follow with: Beast Academy Online
7. Top choice for gifted kids who love workbooks
Singapore Math (PreK-8th)
Child archetype: Enjoys workbooks, is comfortable with reading and writing, may be diagnosed as gifted or open to challenges
Not a fit for: Hands-on learners, children with dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, who get bored or distracted easily, have aversion to handwriting.
The US edition of Singapore for PK-5th grade math is a mastery-based curriculum using intentional sequencing of concepts to support students of all learning styles in progressive, in-depth learning. Based on the highly effective method for teaching math developed by the Singapore school system (whose students have repeatedly ranked #1 in the world for math and science) Singapore Math draws on hands-on exercises, workbooks and drawings to ensure students gain an in-depth understanding of each concept before moving on to the next. While some families consider Singapore Math to be a bit dry, students who like workbooks tend to thrive with this program. Each unit offers a textbook, workbook and optional teacher’s guide for $15-20 per book. We strongly encourage parents to purchase the Home Instructor’s Edition to accompany Singapore Math.
Budget alternative: See Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op, eBay or join homeschool Facebook groups such as Singapore Homeschool Math to get free or discounted curricula.
High school options: AoPS offers physical and Digital options. For online high school math, we recommend Thinkwell Homeschool.
8. Best for high school
Thinkwell Homeschool (6-12th)
Dynamic middle and high school math program with videos, quizzes and live tutoring components.
Child archetype: Engaged in learning, studious, self-motivated.
Not a fit for: Hands on learners, children with aversion to screen time.
Most of our favorite math programs are designed for K-8th graders, but Thinkwell is the rare exception of an in-depth curriculum specifically geared towards middle school and high schoolers that focuses more on concepts than procedure. Thinkwell features dynamic videos by award-winning teachers, accompanied by automatically graded quizzes, chapter and practice tests. Families can also take advantage of online tutoring and office hours. In addition to middle and high school level classes, they also offer college level courses and preparation for AP exams. Students rave about the quality of the teachers, and their step-by-step explanations, especially Dr. Burger. Families appreciate that they can easily review students’ work and progress. Thinkwell offers the opportunity for students to print materials if they don’t have access to computers or internet while traveling. It’s recommended families use the worksheets Thinkwell provides. If students only watch the videos and do the online exercises, their knowledge might stay surface level.
Budget alternative: Khan Academy
9. Best budget pick for PreK and Early Elementary
Khan Academy Kids (PreK-2nd)
Child archetype: Enjoys video games, apps and has some basic intro to digital tools
Not a fit for: Kids who dislike watching videos or screen time.
Khan Academy Kids is a stellar, free alternative for parents who can’t afford $4.99- $9.99/month for Homer. Much like Homer, Khan Academy Kids uses games and colorful characters while teaching concepts sequentially and personalizing learning based on children’s performance in games. Prodigy Game is also free and goes from K-8th, so kids can start using that after mastering basic math concepts in Khan Academy Kids. After 8th grade, families may want to move on to Khan Academy (the original website with video lessons and quizzes) for free, standards-aligned math. Alternatively, families can use Khan Academy for PreK-12th grade. The main difference between Khan Academy Kids and Khan Academy is that Khan Academy Kids is a game-based app (that goes up until 2nd grade). Khan Academy covers all grade levels, but Khan Academy kids is more fun and personalized.
10. Best budget pick for upper elementary through high school
Khan Academy (PreK-12th)
Child archetype: Enjoys videos and quizzes, comfortable with digital tools
Not a fit for: Kids who dislike watching videos if they’re not highly engaging
If families can’t afford Thinkwell Homeschool, Khan Academy is a solid free alternative for most learners. Khan Academy provides video courses and online practice for every math topic and also includes SAT and AP level college math. Some students find the Khan Academy videos a bit dry. And while it doesn’t provide the level of personalization or gamification that other programs do, it gets the job done in terms of ensuring kids have covered all the math material they need to enter college. Khan Academy recently introduced a free tutoring program, Schoolhouse.world that can be used to complement their video lessons and activities.
Honorable Mentions
Not a full curriculum, but still great
These two math programs don’t cover a full math curriculum, but they’re still fantastic. They stand out through their focus on conceptual vs procedural math and truly innovative approach to helping kids built math skills in a way that’s fun and engaging.
Dragon Box Algebra (5 and up, all algebra learners)
As the name suggests, Dragon Box Algebra 5+ (ages 5-8) and Dragon Box Algebra 12+ (ages 9 and up) offer a ridiculously fun way to master algebraic concepts through a highly interactive digital app with a variety of games that use symbols and pictures, rather than just the traditional letters associated with algebra. Jean-Baptiste Huynh founded Dragon Box with Patrick Marchal, Ph.D. in cognitive science, when he realized that many students struggled with algebra despite their intelligence. The games are designed to engage students and create a deeper understanding of concepts beyond popular memorization techniques. They are meant to take the pain out of the learning process and are developed with teachers, parents, and children in mind. Fun for children and adults alike!
Math antics (3rd-8th)
Math Antics is a popular youtube video series (now with accompanying workshops) that aims to make math easy and enjoyable for students. The videos cover topics typically covered between 3rd and 8th grade. While not a full math curriculum, we find the videos valuable to help students clarify specific skill sets they might be working on. The teacher, Rob Cozzens is highly engaging and very funny. Math Antics was created in 2010 by two friends, Cozzens, and Jeremy Robyn, who wanted to develop math resources that were simple, effective and engaging. The key to their success was animating math so that it would come to life for students, and adding a little bit of humor to make it more enjoyable. The Math Antics YouTube channel now has over one million subscribers, and Rob and Jeremy continue to make new math videos for their collection on YouTube and on the Math Antics website. Their goal is to provide great resources that make math a little easier for everyone and to reduce the stress of learning math by making it fun and lighthearted. Math Antics is not a complete curriculum for any grade, but can be used as a supplement to more comprehensive resources
The Research
Why you should trust us
How we tested
Our Top Pick: Beast Academy Online
How to use Beast Academy Online
Flaws, but not dealbreakers
How to help your child learn math
What if you’re “not a math person”?
Why use a math curriculum at home with kids
About your guide
Why You Should Trust Us
This guide was written by Manisha Snoyer, the CEO of Modulo and a former K12 teacher and tutor of 20 years. She’s spent the last seven years researching and testing math curriculum to develop this guide. Jeremy Howard, a world renowned data scientist, educator and father in our community, has been instrumental in advising us through this process of researching options, testing curricula with his own child and their friends, and evaluating options over the course of nearly three years. Hundreds of math majors, math professors, child life specialists, teachers and parents contributed to reviewing and testing this curricula as we served students through the pandemic and beyond.
Manisha has 20 years of experience as a K-12th grade teacher and private tutor to over 2000 children in three countries. She founded three education companies and three non-profit projects that have helped 100k+ families in customizing their child’s education. As a private tutor in Paris, NYC and San Francisco, she helped dozens of students with a wide variety of learning needs build math confidence, deepen understanding, excel in school, and ace standardized tests. She spent the last seven years researching secular K12 curriculum, sifting through tens of thousands of comments in online, secular homeschooling groups, and hundreds of hours testing different curriculum options with her own students. She founded the largest organization supporting families impacted by school closures, which served over 100,000 families giving them personalized advice on curricula and learning at home.
In 2020, Manisha co-founded masteryhour.org with Julie Vuong (UCLA) and Elvin Lin (Berkeley). Masteryhour.org offers free mastery-based math tutoring, pairing 1-1 instruction with digital learning apps. In this context, we coached hundreds of volunteer math and education majors from top universities how to integrate digital math curricula into an online tutoring environment. We analyzed detailed feedback on which curriculum worked well for which kids and why.
During the pandemic, Manisha taught and tutored children Prek-10th grade online for 10 hours a day, watching them use various curricula and trying out different options until they found a program to help them thrive. She’s given consultations with dozens of families helping them find the best fit for a math curricula for their kids that would help them excel, build confidence and love learning. Finally, in the last year, Manisha has met with many of the founders of the math curriculum companies we’ve mentioned here to get more in-depth information on their programs.
Special thanks goes to Jeremy Howard, founding researcher at fast.ai, data scientist, researcher, developer, educator, entrepreneur - and as a dad, one of the first members of the Modulo community in July 2020. Jeremy devoted countless hours to personally observing many of the Modulo online sessions, testing and reviewing curricula and digital learning apps to ensure they were mathematically accurate, pedagogically sound and developmentally appropriate for kids of all ages and abilities. He also discovered several of the programs on this list in pursuit of the best educational options for his own child. He was instrumental in helping us find programs that went beyond rote memorization and helped kids develop deep conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills. Jeremy also helped us shape our views and approach to “screen time,” honing a method that involved combing digital learning apps and videos with engaged parents and tutors.
When it comes to reviewing math curricula, Jeremy’s extensive expertise has been indispensable. He is a founding researcher at fast.ai, a research institute dedicated to making deep learning more accessible, and is an honorary professor at the University of Queensland. Previously, Jeremy was a Distinguished Research Scientist at the University of San Francisco, where he was the founding chair of the Wicklow Artificial Intelligence in Medical Research Initiative.
Among his many accomplishments, Jeremy developed course.fast.ai, the most widely-used deep learning course in the world. Jeremy also co-founded global masks4all movement, leading the largest evidence review of masks, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and becoming the most read paper of all time on preprints.org. Jeremy was also the founding CEO of Enlitic, the first company to apply deep learning to medicine, the President and Chief Scientist of the data science platform Kaggle, and the top ranked participant in international machine learning competitions 2 years in a row.
We could not have built this list without the intense engagement, wisdom and passion of our community of parents, teachers and kids from around the world: math professors, math majors, certified teachers, homeschool parents, learning specialists and volunteers.
Several math professors at leading universities including MIT, Cornell and NYU observed tutoring sessions at masteryhour.org (our volunteer tutoring project) and gave notes on the curriculum and apps to help improve learning, including professor Andrew Beveridge from Macalester college, who specializes in random graph theory and Professor Emeritus Mike Evans from Washington Lee who volunteered weekly for two years coaching volunteer tutors using these curricula with kids learning math in Mastery Hour. The math majors who volunteered at Mastery Hour have also volunteered hundreds of hours reviewing our favorite programs and comparing notes.
Modulo’s child life specialists (CCLS)Zahra Jaffer and Deb Vilas played a vital role in helping us understand the social-emotional considerations that factor into how children learn math well, and determine which programs were able to effectively address these concerns.
Additionally, several parents in Modulo are prominent math professors at leading universities. They’ve reviewed these programs themselves and tested them with their own students, giving thumbs up to our top picks.
How we tested
In 2019, we began interviewing secular homeschooling families about their favorite physical curriculum and digital learning apps. We spoke to dozens of families and microschool leaders who had tested a variety of different learning programs. We then began poring over feedback from families about their favorite math programs in secular homeschooling groups on Facebook and Reddit. We analyzed nearly 10,000 comments from families recommending curricula they’d tested with their own kids, paying special attention to parents with children with special needs (gifted, ADHD, spectrum, dyscalculia). Many of these families had tried multiple curricula with different children before choosing their favorites. Many were certified teachers, mathematicians and math professors: we gave extra weight to their comments.
We began developing student archetypes, based on what curricula we thought would correspond with different types of learners and families (e.g. students who loved video games, loved playing outside, had high math math ability or low self-confidence, as well as different diagnosed learning needs including profound giftedness, gifted, autism, dyscalculia, dyslexia, etc). We factored in family budget and preferences around screen time into these emerging archetypes.
When the pandemic started in March 2020, we started schoolclosures.org the largest coalition of non-profits and tech companies helping families through school closures, that served over 100k families. Families began calling us and asking for advice about what curricula to use with their kids. We recommended curricula and then followed up to see how effective the curricula the recommended was for them, further refining these student archetypes.
In September 2020, we started masteryhour.org, that offers free math tutoring to K-12th grade students in public schools. Simultaneously, we formed a paid online tutoring company to support families who withdrew from school to learn at home during the pandemic. This gave us the opportunity to directly observe hundreds of students using digital learning apps and the physical curricula we recommended over the course of the year. We were able to observe how well students engaged with new curricula (Was it fun? Did they keep coming back? Were explanations clear? Did they like it in the beginning, but get bored after a few months?). We could also identify if there were bugs, errors, or places kids got stuck in the programs and needed adult assistance. Since many of the learning programs we use track student progress, we were also able to gauge how effective they were in supporting students learning math. With our favorite programs, working 30 minutes to an hour a day with a tutor, parent or caregiver, many kids mastered the entire K-8th grade curricula in six months. It was truly astonishing to watch.
After three years, we’ve identified all the top math programs recommended by parents who are math professors, teachers and data scientists, tried them with dozens of parents and observed thousands of students use them from the beginning to the end of the curriculum.
Our top pick
Beast Academy Online (K-8th)
Of all the math curricula we tested, the online version of Beast Academy (designed for children ages 6-13 stood out as the most innovative, challenging and engaging mastery-based curricula that was accessible to a wide variety of learners. We specifically highlighted the online version of Beast Academy because of the adaptive software, and entertaining videos. While Beast Academy was designed with advanced students in mind, we found it was also the most appealing families with diverse learning profiles, beyond gifted. In particular, many children with dyslexia have thrived with the online version of Beast Academy, which made math click in a whole new way for them.
Beast Academy was co-founded by Richard Rusczyk, USA Math Olympiad winner and CEO of the Art of Problem Solving, and Jason Batterson, 8th grade math teacher and North Carolina state champion MATHCOUNTS coach. They met at the national MATHCOUNTS championships in 2009 and set out to create a math curriculum for younger students that presented mathematics as a beautiful, creative discipline. The idea for a comic-style curriculum came from a desire to model conversations about math in a way that students could enjoy and relate to. In 2018, they launched Beast Academy Online, the interactive online learning platform for children ages 6-13, which includes teaching videos, puzzles, games, more than 1000 lessons and over 20,000 problems. The curriculum includes challenging problems, engaging explanations, and a focus on the hows and whys of mathematics.
What differentiates Beast Academy online from the other programs we tried is the quality of the adaptive software, engaging teaching, the multi-modal approach (video, audio, pictures, text) - and most of all, the emphasis on cultivating conceptual vs procedural understanding of math. It’s truly focused on help kids develop math problem solving skills, logical and abstract thinking, deepening symbolic and spatial awareness, rather than simply preparing for standardized exams.
Students move forward at their own pace, mastering each concept before moving on to the next. The program also teaches social-emotional skills like a growth mindset. The little monsters at Beast Academy model attitudes and approaches that we want to see in classrooms, including making mistakes and learning from them. Students who have aversion to handwriting or find writing painful will particularly enjoy the easy-to-use digital interface. From this perspective, it’s the most innovative, comprehensive, math program we’ve found.
How to use Beast Academy
To use Beast Academy online, students can log in and complete online lessons from a desktop or tablet. Parents and caregivers have access to a detailed dashboard (available on desktop, tablet or phone), that includes student progress reports.
Beast Academy does have a placement test to help parents choose a level, however they encourage families to start a level below what children
We recommend sitting beside your child as they work, giving them as much time as they need to think and figure things out without pressuring them, not giving answers, encouraging them to use the videos and hints Beast Academy provides to solve answers. When they get an answer right, you can occasionally ask them to explain it to you as if they’re the teacher. This helps them to deepen the understanding of the process they went through and encourages them to break down concepts. If your child is on a roll with the program, you can do your own work side by side with them as they move forward, or help another child at the same time.
For more tips on communicating with children around learning, see our guide to family involvement in education.
Beast Academy Online Demo
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Beast Academy was designed with advanced math students in mind, but many students who are not particularly strong in math at school also do very well in the program. At first, it might feel challenging, or different than what you’d find at a typical school, but this is because Beast Academy online is helping to develop those deep problem solving skills, not the memorization of procedures and formulas we typically see at school. If you find your child is frustrated, try gently encouraging them to move forward, working on the program 5-10 minutes a day at first. If they are getting very frustrated, we recommend choosing another program, and possibly coming back to Beast Academy at a later time.
Children at the age of five and below might not yet be at a stage of brain development where they are capable of the abstract thinking Beast Academy helps develop. This is why we recommend younger children start with a program such as Homer and build their way up to Beast Academy Online or simply wait to start math until age five or six. There is no evidence that learning academic skills earlier leads to better understanding later in life, so it is more than fine to wait.
If a child has very low confidence in math, it might be a good idea to start Beast Academy a few levels below what they’re used to, or try a program like Prodigy that will give them more confidence before they move on to Beast Academy. If your child has dyscalculia, Right Start Math might be a better fit.
Some parents don’t want screen time and some kids have a distinct preference for physical curricula. In this case, it’s good to follow that and try a physical curriculum such as Beast Academy Books, Wild Math or Right Start Math.
The biggest critique we hear about Beast Academy is that it’s too challenging, or that kids are moving through it too slowly. It’s worthwhile to remember that Beast Academy is approaching math in a different way than most families are used to so this will naturally take a little time to get used to. If you buy into the idea that learning problem solving vs memorizing procedures has inherent value to prepare kids for the math that they’ll need in life, we encourage you to keep going when it feels hard.
Children who are gifted in math may be used to math coming easy to them before they tried Beast Academy. Some (but not all) gifted children have perfectionist tendencies and feel perturbed that they’re confronted with a math program that isn’t easy for them. Other children may embrace the challenge. It’s difficult to know how your child will respond until you try it out.
We think challenge and frustration are vital components to learning. We’re often conditioned to keep kids happy, but overcoming a challenge builds a growth mindset and pushing through frustration cultivates grit, all qualities that are essential to an independent, lifelong learner.
No curriculum is the perfect fit for every child, so if yours is especially distressed, then we’d certain recommend trying another option, but consider not giving up right away if your main complaint is it's taking more time to complete a lesson or is too challenging.
How help your child learn math
The best way to approach helping your child learn math is to enter a learning mindset yourself. By engaging in learning new skills, modeling grit and a growth mindset as you explore math together, you’ll model qualifies of effective learning for your child - and as a perk, learn some of those math concepts you might not have grasped at school.
Different children will have different levels of stamina when it comes to focusing intently on math. We recommend parents spend 30 minutes a day on math with younger children (grades Prek-2nd) and an hour a day with older kids. Certainly, if your child is eager to spend 11 hours a day working on Beast Academy, by all means, allow it!
Physical well-being compliments cognitive well-being. Choose a time of day where your child is alert, well fed and well rested to work on math in a clean space free from distraction. For many children this is the morning, but different kids have different times of day where they are most focused and awake.
Allow children to move forward at their own pace. The rate of learning is not always linear. You might find that your child gets stuck for a few days, or even a few weeks, but if you give them time and trust them to solve problems, you’ll find that they’ll have a breakthrough after some time and accelerate rapidly.
If your child gets stuck, or has a question, rather than giving them the answer, encourage them to draw on the tools available. Beast Academy online offers hints and wonderful instructional videos that children can watch over and over again until they understand. This sends them the implicit message that they are capable learners and empowers them to find tools to drive their own learning.
Some parents feel uncomfortable if children pause and think for even a minute, but it’s vital to give your child this time to let their wheels spin. Let children step away and think through things. It’s no coincidence that you’ll often see physicists at leading universities walking back and forth down the hallway in their department or university library. Sometimes we need to have time, or step away and focus on something else to arrive at our aha movements.
If you choose to hire a tutor to help your child with Beast Academy Online, an online tutor can be a great option as a digital program makes it easy for your child to screen share as they go.
However, this is not necessary as most parents are perfectly capable of guiding their children’s learning even if they don’t feel confident in their own math abilities.
What if you’re “not a math person?”
You can help your child with math even if you don’t consider yourself “a math person.” Many people lose confidence in math because they couldn’t learn math at school in a way that was personalized to their unique learning needs. Some of us were told that we were “bad at math,” or felt bored in math class just because we couldn’t learn math in the way it was taught at school. However, most of us do have symbolic and spatial awareness and could have taken our math skills much further if we were taught in a way that honored our learning needs, and had teachers to could help us connect what we were learning to our lives.
Fortunately, all of the math curricula we’ve chosen here are specifically designed for parents and caregivers to use at home with kids, regardless of whether or not you consider yourself good at math.
For parents learning more about the “not a math person” myth, check out our session on how to help your child with math if you’re not a math person with Rachel Thomas, PhD
Why use a math curriculum at home with kids
1-1 mastery based learning works better for math
Research shows 1-1 mastery-based instruction is more efficient than classroom instruction, especially for math (regardless of whether the learning guide is a trained teacher or parent/caregiver). By spending 30 minutes to an hour on math at home, kids can learn at their own pace, in the style that works best for them, without being rushed ahead or held back by other students, and without the peer pressure of observing how other students are performing on specific math problems relative to them.
Focusing on conceptual, rather than procedural math has inherent value
A good math curriculum at home should focus on conceptual learning rather than rote memorization of procedures. Many traditional school math classes simply throw information at students without teaching them how to reason their way to the answer, leading to a lack of passion for the subject. Additionally, repetitive homework that requires the same algorithmic process over and over again can be draining and cause students to lose interest in math. Much of traditional math education is focused on memorizing procedures rather than really learning how to problem solve.
Another issue is the lack of proper explanations and mathematical proofs in many traditional school math classes. While proofs should not be the sole focus, showing them occasionally can help students understand the beauty and symmetry in mathematics. Finally, students often view math as a mundane tool rather than a way to create order from chaos and a means to explore the universe. A good math curriculum should help students see the interesting and mind-bending structures that can be created from simple symbols on a page.
Designing strong math curricula requires a specialized skill set
Skills for designing a math curriculum are quite different than these required all-in-one-curriculum. It’s good to have a special math curricula in addition to an all-in-one curriculum. We’ve found that most of our favorite all-in-one curriculum are weaker when it comes to math, or don’t include it at all. All the curricula we recommend are designed by math educators with specific expertise in teaching math. Whether or not you’re homeschooling, it can be a good idea to teach math at home.
What if I can’t afford it?
Money should not be an obstacle in giving your child access to a high-quality math curriculum. We’ve done our best to include a number of exceptional free programs such as Prodigy and Khan Academy. That said, most paid programs do have educational equity as part of their mission, and may even have a non-profit branch created to subsidize a certain number of learners, so it’s always good to ask for a discount or full scholarship if you can’t afford a certain program you think would be a good fit for your child. Often free or discounted curriculum can be found from the curriculum provider themselves, in Facebook homeschool and/or curriculum groups, eBay, the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op and elsewhere. See our post on how to homeschool on a budget for more info on finding the curriculum of your choice at a free or discounted rates.
About your guide
Manisha Snoyer is the CEO and co-founder of Modulo. Prior to founding Modulo, she was a PreK-Grey teacher and tutor 20 years, teaching over 18 subjects to 2000+ kids in three countries. She founded the largest organization supporting families impacted by school closures, giving personalized advice on curricula to thousands of families. She also launched masteryhour.org and coached hundreds of volunteer college students on how to use math curricula with kids. During the pandemic, Manisha taught and tutored children Prek-10th grade online for 10 hours a day, watching them use various curricula and trying out different options until they found a program to help them thrive. She’s given consultations with dozens of families helping them find the best fit for a math curricula for their kids. In the last year, Manisha has met with many of the founders of the leading math apps to get more in-depth information on their programs and how it can serve children.
This post is first on a series we’re developing on curriculum to use at home with kids. Next week, we’ll dive into our favorite literacy programs. Stay tuned.