I recently bought the M&D abacus for my 1 year old. I was looking to see if we could do anything besides math on it and I stumbled upon this
http://blog.melissaanddoug.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/abacus-pattern-cards-2.pdf.
My son won't be able to work on these patterns on his own for a while but I thought I'd share this with the folks here should anyone find it useful. I see a few hours of Montessori sensorial activities in the future with the abacus and a mirror.