Which abacus should I buy?

[penguinpet]

I was thinking of buying an abacus for my 28 months twins. Yesterday I saw a Melissa and Doug abacus at T J Maxx for $9.99. I was tempted to buy it, but was wondering if there are better ones available. This is just an additional activity for my kids because they love to count. Right now they count from 1 to 20 ( mostly 1 to 16 as we have 16 stairs in our house ), but later I am thinking of starting more math activities. Right now we are concentrating on reading. Is Melissa and Doug abacus a good one for toddlers and which activities should I do with them besides the usual counting. Which book should I buy for abacus related math (I am planning to buy Marshmallow Math for math otherwise..too many good reviews on BK  ) Please advise me.

[PokerDad]

I have the same abacus. We occasionally use it to count. I know that TMT has the same one also and custom painted it to use as a right start math abacus.

To answer the question, which you buy really depends on your goals. I can't answer that part for you, but to give you an idea of what I plan on doing - hopefully around 28 months (or a little older), I hope to introduce the soroban abacus. The soroban and the M&D abacus are totally different and have different objectives.

If you're just counting beads, then I'd say the M&D is a fine choice. If you're looking to do more at some point, you might want to make some adjustments like TMT did.

[seastar]

If you are in the US, you can get the RS abacus for $15 on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Color-Desktop-Abacus-no-LER4335/dp/B004Y82BOW

[Skylark]

Poker Dad you put it well, I dont even need to write my reply 

Well, what we did -- we recreated M&D one a la TMT's idea, it worked really well for basic quantities, number families, 5+1, 5+2 type of equations, very very visual and it was very helpful for that. To use M&D as is was quite confusing because of different colors.

Then we are about to make our own Soroban. We could not find the one I liked for the price that was not outrageous   and then I came across the massage seat cover for the car we never used ( something like this http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Wood-Cover-Massage-Cushion/dp/B002A96SSM) it has perfect beautiful wooden beads and my husband is about to make 3 Sorobans for us -- one for each kid and one for me to demonstrate.

We use abacus a lot and I think it is a good investment.

[penguinpet]

Thank you all for your replies. I think I will go ahead and buy the Melissa and Doug abacus for now, and think of other options gradually.

[Skylark]

And here is a nice post by TMT on how you can convert it to Right Start Abacus

http://teachingmytoddlers.blogspot.com/2012/11/diy-right-start-abacus-soroban.html

Enjoy!

[penguinpet]

Thanks Skylark. I found the link to www.MathSecret.com on TMT's website. They even have an e-book on abacus for a free download. I think I got my starting point for abacus .

[Skylark]

Thats great!

There are also some videos on abacus on youtube if you do the search.

And if you have an iPad there is absolutely perfect Abacus app, 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/know-abacus/id641867438?mt=8

And it is free, while it has all the stuff that you need!

[Tamsyn]

This is the one I got for my preschoolers.  They love the "restart" button that sets the abacus back to zero.
http://www.amazon.com/School-Office-Calculation-Japanese-Soroban/dp/B004U88IOI/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1374868118&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=soroban

[penguinpet]

Thanks pokerdad, seastar, skylark and tamsyn, this forum is great . I have one more question. I bought the book Marshmallow math and beginning to read it. But I could not open the link to the abacus e-book from mathstart.com, (they say I have to be a member, I already am). Anyways, can anyone suggest me a good book or website for abacus, as I am new to it? Or can anyone share the link to the free mathstart ebook which opens?

[lzp11]

I use the following websites a lot:

http://www.visual-soroban.org/

and

http://www.sorobancymru.co.uk/

[bella]

hi  I converted a cheap abacus i had two a RS abacus for my baby and i have 2 others RS abacus i use with his older sister . We are enjoying RS program and using their abacus a lot . i read a lot about soroban on the forum I like to ge tit but am a bit worried it will confuse my daughter who is really doing well with RS abacus does lots of mental math by closing her eyes and picturing the abacus . What added benefit the soroban abacus has over the RS one . can somebody explain it please ??
viv

[bella]

you can see in the photo my RS abacus used in one of our math lessons xxx

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