No, those aren’t some magic words to make something appear! An abacus is an ancient kind of “calculator” that can be used to teach math skills such as counting, number patterns, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
I recently purchased a math curriculum for Connor that suggested that we use an abacus…so I thought “Why not?” He’s been fighting me a bit to do his work, although once we get into it he always says it’s fun…esp number lines! I initially purchased the Melissa & Doug Classic Wooden Abacus as a teaching aid, but figured it could double as a holiday gift. Today though we discovered that he was being asked to add 4 numbers together, so I thought it might help us get through while having a bit of fun. He seemed to think so too!
In this picture you can see that he’s adding 2+2+2+2 on the top lines (probably just playing on the bottom ones since I was distracted trying to figure out the new camera). He was then able to work on counting by 2s to find the sum. We finished his work quickly and then he wanted to take it upstairs with him to use as vet tool (he’s into dogs and horses right now…nothing is safe or used as it was intended).
The abacus is pretty cool! We should be able to count by ones or tens (each row has 10) to 100. We can also count to 1000 by saying each bead is 10 or 10,000 if each bead is 100 and…so on and so on!
Here’s where you can find one if you’re interested: