Mental Math progress!

[aangeles]

I am beyond thrilled for you guys! Learning the abacus is such a wonderful gift that will impact math skills the rest of her life. I am so jealous you guys have a center where you're at, I am trying to decide on an online curriculum now but I know it will be no where near as effective as in person tutoring. We're going to give it a shot tho!

Ella, Kudos to you for doing such a fantastic job with your abacus, we know you must be practicing and trying very hard! 

Does this look like a good program...

http://www.mathabacus.com/store.html

Maquenzie and Tonya,

The Mathabacus program was the one I was considering doing with Ella if we were still in Chicago and did not have access to a teaching center. I think for parents as well-versed in EL as you guys are, you would probably be just as effective teaching your own kids as a teacher in a center. There are certain benefits to going to a school, such as having some (healthy) peer pressure, social interaction, etc. but Ella being the youngest kid the school has ever accepted, they are giving her one-on-one lessons anyway so she doesn't yet get the benefits of being in a school. We were lucky that she has a really good teacher who totally gets it that she is an active 3-year-old with a short attention span and she modifies the lessons considerably to keep her interested. Having said that, nobody knows as well as I do how her mind works and how to best explain a concept so she fully understands it, so I do a good amount of supplemental teaching at home as well. I would estimate that I probably do 75-80% of the work and the teacher the rest. And I am very happy to do it! 

By the way, TmT, thank you for adding that note of encouragement addressed to Ella. She was completely thrilled to read something personally addressed to her! 

[aangeles]

Congrats aangles. Miss Ella is a true testiment to EL  Now I need to get back on track with my DD.  Who is a battle and a half.

What centre are you at? and would you recommend any other soroban abacus programs?

Kimba.

amazing!! she is a gifted child.

may i know what is the name of the centre that u have placed her? thank you!

Ella goes to SIP Academy which is based in Malaysia but has centers all over the world. The one Ella goes to is a franchise BUT:

1. The franchise owners themselves went to train in Malaysia and are actually the head teachers in the center.

2. They take a very personal interest in and approach to each of their students and were willing to work with Ella on a one-on-one basis, taking into consideration her age, attention span, and learning style. They normally only accept students 5 years old and above.

3. They even offered to train me for free so that I can more effectively teach Ella at home.

4. They use the two-hand method and place a strong emphasis on auditory problem-solving (versus relying on written questions).

5. It was actually the only abacus center that I know of in our country so I didn't really have any choice.    I just figured that if it didn't work out, I could still use their materials and teach Ella myself at home. 

[lelask]

wow, excellent work both of you  . You are very inspirative as always  .
I would also love to try soroban abacus once the time is right but I  am still wondering what is the miracle difference in using soroban abacus and classical abacus?  Why soroban works better? Or can my child learn mental math by using classical abacus?

[TeachingMyToddlers]

Anything is possible of course, but I am guessing the things that contribute to the mental math success of the abacus may be a strong emphasis on groups of 5 (which leads to quicker thinking) and the number of beads. A traditional 100 bead abacus is too slow to encourage the "flash" of mental math, it's slower and more work to manipulate, and therefore more work to visualize as well Just a speculation, but I have not personally heard of people doing mental math on a 100 bead abacus if that is indeed what you're referring to.

[lelask]

Yes I speculate myself - I think my left brain really wants to know    . For sure it must be easier to manipulate with the beads if they are placed horizontally. Maybe Ella will tell us one day
And maybe it is becouse they  teach children to use the traditional abacus very slowly. But you are probably right that it would be difficult with 10 beads in the row.

Is Ella still using traditional abacus?

[Ayesha Nicole]

Congratulations Ella! and Aangeles!  How exciting!      

I waiting to receive a program I ordered to use with my girls at home, and until then they are practicing counting to 100 on a 3-rod abacus.  And your story is inspiring to me since I also am learning with them. 

Please keep us updated.   

[NadiaD]

Congratulations to both of you, aangeles!

I can imagine how great that feels!

Well Done!

[PokerDad]

I  am still wondering what is the miracle difference in using soroban abacus and classical abacus?  Why soroban works better? Or can my child learn mental math by using classical abacus?

I'm far far from an expert but have some thoughts or hunches on this.

There are perhaps people that use classic abacus for mental math vs soroban, but from what I can gather, the anzan or mental math kids/adults that I've seen all over the internet have always used the soroban.

Really the only difference is the beads. If I'm not mistaken, the classic abacus has two heavenly beads and 5 earthly beads.... well, that's 15 just in the ones column alone. I might be wrong about this, and some of the newer abacus have either 2 heavenly or 5 earthly... meaning you can have 10 in the ones column.

Well, the soroban uses place value exceptionally well. There can only be 9 in the ones column (or any of the columns). If you go over 9, then you're going to have use the tens column (the next column up).
And this is how we write the numbers... 9 is single digit, 10 is two digit. 100 is three digit. The soroban mimics this perfectly.

Because it mimics so perfectly, it gives you an excellent mental representation of the number itself... and so when you do the calculation you just look to the hundreds column, the tens column, and the ones column to see how many beads are in each column effectively giving you the number. If you had 10 in the ones column, it might get confusing (IMO)

I also like having heavenly and earthly beads; My wife bought a melissa and doug abacus that has just 10 beads on each rod. I plan on using this for early counting, but I think it would suck for calculating. The heavenly bead makes a 5 chunk that allows for quicker manipulation... you don't have to grab say 6 beads and slide them... with heavenly beads you just push the 5 chunk up and remove an earthly bead... just easier to see, but perhaps harder to understand AT FIRST.

This is one reason why I like Singapore math. They really emphasize number bonds (what equals 5, and what equals 10)... it seems like a good set up for soroban use (from my limited look at their early text)

Oh, and the sliding horizontally vs vertically... again it mimics how we write the number. 1,000 is written left to right. Imagine thinking of the number like this:
1
0
0
0

This is a little more difficult to get with a mental snap shot. Additionally, the horizontal sliding abacus that I've seen require or use a very long rod (which is excellent for counting and really SEEING how the counts relate to each other) - longer rod means larger movements which will also mean slower calculation because the moves take longer to execute. Having said that, it takes some fine motor skills to use a soroban... the beads are small and the moves are small and distinguished.... I don't think any little kid can just start working with one; they have to develop the ability (or have a soroban geared for small fingers... like large crayons)

[aangeles]

. I don't think any little kid can just start working with one; they have to develop the ability (or have a soroban geared for small fingers... like large crayons)

PokerDad, you would be interested to know that there IS a special abacus with large beads made for younger kids called a Pacchi abacus: http://www.kidenergy.com/27-pacchi.html

I got one when Ella was 2.5, but frankly did not get much use out of it beyond showing her the numbers 1-4 on it. The reason being, at that time, I didn't know if she was cognitively ready to understand that a heavenly bead, even though it is just 1 bead, represents 5 units. She may have been ready, but I wasn't SURE.    So instead, I started by using Play-Doh - giving her 5 small lumps then combining them to make 1 big lump and putting it on top - and subsequently changing to marbles and stones (like the one in the video you also discovered). By the time we were done with these exercises, she was ready for a regular beginner's abacus. I am sure you don't have to do these preliminary activities when starting with 4 or 5 year olds as they can probably understand the concept of a single heavenly bead representing 5, but I felt I had to do them since I started Ella so young. Oh, and one other thing, I would probably wait until the child can count with one-to-one correspondence reliably before starting on the playdoh activity.

[Ayesha Nicole]

PokerDad & Aangeles:

We just received the same 3-rod abacus:

http://www.kidenergy.com/27-pacchi.html

and the 5-rod abacus:

http://www.kidenergy.com/27-us100.html

and I ordered for the fun of it the "Chinese" abacus with two beads on top:

http://www.kidenergy.com/28-me2664.html

[PokerDad]

Thank the both of you for showing me the pacchi... I've seen them on demonstrations, but didn't know how to find them and didn't know what they were called. Do either of you know how to find those really big ones they use for classrooms? (just curious)

[Ayesha Nicole]

Certainly.  And yes, the same website sells them in two sizes:

http://www.kidenergy.com/27-teach5.html

http://www.kidenergy.com/27-teach11.html

and a few other abaci:

http://www.kidenergy.com/abacus.html

[aangeles]

It's called a teacher's abacus:

http://www.kidenergy.com/27-teach11.html

http://www.kidenergy.com/27-teach5.html

You can get them much cheaper from companies in India and SE Asia, but they don't ship to the US.

[PokerDad]

Thank you! That's a great site

You can get them much cheaper from companies in India and SE Asia, but they don't ship to the US

Ah, bummer!!! Maybe when the time is right, I'll have to find someone that's willing to buy and then ship me one on the cheap.

[lelask]

Could you please tell me what is the size of the beads on the small pacchi abacus? Many thanks

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