Abacus Activities

This list of activities came from the card packaged with the abacus Aidan got for Christmas. I'm putting them here because it seems to be oddly difficult to find beginner-level activities to do with the abacus. What's below seems to be enough to get a good start anyway.


Match My Move

Move any number of beads to one side of the frame. Ask the child to match your "move" on the wire below yours. This can also be done with a repetitive pattern--- arrange the 10 beads in different groupings (eg 3 beads, 1 bead, 2 beads) for the child to mimic on the wire below.

Counting Games

Move a certain number of beads to one side and ask the child to count how many beads you moved and how many remain on the other side. Or have the child count from one to one hundred as they move that number of beads on each of the ten wires.

Beat the Clock

Quickly move a certain number of beads to one side and have the child say how many were moved and what color they are as fast as he can (eg 7 yellow beads, 4 red beads, etc). See if he can get all 10 wires correct, or how many in a row can be answered correctly.

Make A Shape

Have the child try to make simple shapes using beads on multiple wires -- a square, triangle, rectangle, diamonds, or a perfect straight or diagonal line.

Simple Addition Games

Choose a number and determine how many different combinations you can find to achieve that sum. Combinations of ten would be 1+9, 2+8 etc.

Complex addition games.

Create larger numbers by assigning different numbers to the colors -- blues are ones, reds are tens, whites are 100s, green are thousands, etc. Line up any number of beads below each other (eg 1st wire -- 3 blue, 2nd wire 2 red etc) and have the child add the totals together to determine the sum.

Multi-Function Problems.

Do addition, subtraction and even simple multiplication and division problems by using the first wire for the first number, the second for the second, and have the child answer it on the third wire (eg 7-4= 3.). After putting a certain number of beads on the first and second wires, yell out the type of problem (addition) and have them race to get the answer.

Match a Letter

Draw or say a capital letter, and have the child create its shape on the abacus (eg letters A, I, E, L are good for starters).

Dice and Dominoes for Counting and Adding

I spent a lot of last week exploring Google Reader, and found this manual called Methods of Teaching Arithmetic in Primary Schools, from 1888. You can download the whole thing as a PDF for free. Anyway, I had read before in a book by Ruth Beechick that in the "old days" children did not start doing written math problems right away; the teachers would give them lots of practice with manipulatives and "real arithmetic" before they started teaching them abstract symbols.

This book from 1888 seems to confirm that, since the whole first section of the book is about teaching children to work with numbers in dot form so they can actually see what they are doing by "adding" and "taking away". It has a graphic system based on patterned dots roughly similar to dice or domino patterns. So ever since I read that book I've been looking for online dice or domino manipulatives.

I have some large foam dominoes that look a bit like this...except they are all standard black. So I've been showing these to the littlies frequently -- I keep them in the kitchen -- with the goal of getting them to recognize the shape of the number patterns immediately. They like to play with them, too. They also have been playing a fair amount with dice which of course have the same type of pattern.

Anyway, today while I was looking online for manipulatives and worksheet activities, I found this WorksheetWorks site. It is pretty neat. You can enter parameters and it will print out various counting and number concept sheets. It has dice counting flash cards and also counting with objects, and simple image-based addition.

There is a bit more about Ruth Beechick's approach to early education....here at this lovely blog. Basically, she says that in math learning, children move from:

1. Manipulative/Concrete --->
2. Image-based (still need visuals but don't need to actually handle and move the objects)---->
3. Abstract (a mental image or symbol suffices -- you internally understand the notion of threeness, or variable, or square of the hypotenuse, or whatever)

She makes the point that primary age children need the manipulatives and images because they aren't developmentally at the stage for abstract thinking. But even older learners need hands-on and visual experience when they are starting something new. You see for yourself that it's easier learning a new computer skill if you can work through it yourself, perhaps with someone showing you how, or at least with a diagram or graphic to help you.

Hundreds Chart for Early Math

I uploaded a colored Hundreds Chart (as a doc) My two little ones love these and they are helpful in learning the order of numbers. I emphasized the 10's with highlighting just to help them organize in their minds. Later there are other patterns that can be emphasized, like even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of five, and so on.

Right now, with a kindergartener and a special needs 1st grader, I am mostly working on being able to name numbers up to 100 and find where they are on the board. My kindergartener has this pretty much mastered. My first grader has devised a cute game to play with the 100's chart. He spins a top (he loves tops) and then we call out the number where it landed. He likes to do this with a map of the United States, too.

Another game we play that teaches one to one correspondence is to put pennies (or any kind of counter) on the number places. This gives him some visual and concrete reinforcement for one-to-one correspondence. This is something my other kids grasped instinctively but which has been a problem for him. He is much faster at mastering verbal, rote things like counting, than at actually grasping the concepts behind the verbal terminology.

Here is a blog that has 7 things to do with a hundred chart (and lots of other neat math activities).

My kindergartener liked this site with various interactive and printable games for 100 Day.
My 1st grader liked this Mend the Number Square game online.
I am not altogether convinced these computer games teach to a mastery level but they do seem to help with exposure level learning.