Anyone taught their kids anzan (mental Soroban/abacus) math and Vedic math?

[mathnerd]

I always meant to teach my son Soroban, Anzan (mental abacus) and Vedic math. I am planning to start this winter (with my 6 year old son) and am looking for resources to use for these topics. I am thinking of doing them as "fun" topics together and hope to learn these with my child. Anyone who has BTDT and can point me to the right resources? I have found some videos online, but a textbook or a curriculum might be more helpful to teach in a systematic manner. Thanks for your help!

[geodob]

Here's a link to a site that has plenty of information.

http://www.soroban.com/howto_abacus_eng.html

 

Also to begin with, you could start with the Pacchi soroban, which only has has 3 rows and can be used to count up to 999.

This helps develop a feel for using it, and is less confusing to start with.

It costs $25 which includes postage.

http://www.soroban.com/english/shopping/

[Kerileanne99]

I am currently teaching my dd (nearly 4) Soroban primarily at home. We really love it. I had no previous experience and there was a bit of a learning curve, but there are lots of great resources out there to overcome that hump. I have acquired a ridiculous number of books, software, DVDs, YouTube videos, and even some great apps for IPad. I am on my phone at the moment, but would be more than happy to share links to some of he better resources. In the meantime, there is a thread in another forum where several members (including me) have listed just about every resource they have found, and which ones helped them

:http://forum.brillkids.com/product-discussions-and-reviews/overall-abacus-programs-math-discussion/

 

We do now drive about once per month to a Soroban school, just to make sure I am teaching her properly and to help me with any questions. My dd would absolutely LOVE to do her classes there with the other kids, but it is nearly a 2 hour drive one-way, and the classes themselves are about 2 hours long. The kiddo really does want to stay, but I just feel like it is too much! If she continues to love it, we will attend more when she is ready.

Currently we are using the software from the school, which can be done at home and uploaded to the site so she gets feedback and competition if she wants. We also found a lovely college student at the Uni where my hubby teaches, an exchange student from Japan, that comes over as a mother's helper once per week. She also helps with any questions and works with my dd on the abacus.

 

Also, do you already have a Soroban? If not I can link some decen ones. Part of my learning curve was buying poor quality ( not necessarily cheap!) or improper versions. I also have a larger, demonstration style Soroban for teaching.

 

One thing you can do immediately that will be very useful as you are gathering resources, is to make sure your child is very confident in his 'friends.' That is simply terminology for pairs of numbers whose sum is ten or five. Big friends are pairs that add to make ten, small friends add to make five. Practice these in terms of Singapore number-bond style, and it will make things much easier. If you are using Singapore math as your spine, Soroban seems much more natural.

 

It really is a lot of fun, and gives the kids so much confidence!

[mathnerd]

Thank you so much, geodob and Kerileanne99! My child currently does Saxon math at school and I afterschool using Singapore Math. What I have found is that, though he gets very advanced concepts quickly and can produce accurate results, his speed at arriving at the results is very, very slow. I am a great fan of Soroban and Vedic math and I think that these skills not only make the math faster, they help in whole brain development. 

I have access to a Japantown near where I live, so I can pick up a pretty good soroban easily. I will check out the Pacchi soroban - it could be the right place to start. 

Kerileanne, I am off to researching those links on the brillkids site. And thanks for the tip on the SM style number bonds - it is heartening to know that Soroban and SM are compatible!

[Heathermomster]

Check out this abacus.  It's the same abacus as mentioned above, at half the cost.

 

I really want to pursue this further with my DD.  I have a handful of Soroban resources but no scope and sequence.  I feel like I'm piecing together a program and would prefer not to leave gaps.  DD loves Soroban though.

[mathnerd]

Heathermomster, I am looking at Nurtureminds curriculum and also this free book: http://www.sorobancymru.co.uk/index.html - you can click on the links to the left that will download free ebooks for each of the topics like addition and subtraction. I have seen previous posts from you in this forum on this topic. What curriculum have you used with your DD? Is she doing Anzan now? 

[Heathermomster]

Heathermomster, I am looking at Nurtureminds curriculum and also this free book: http://www.sorobancymru.co.uk/index.html - you can click on the links to the left that will download free ebooks for each of the topics like addition and subtraction. I have seen previous posts from you in this forum on this topic. What curriculum have you used with your DD? Is she doing Anzan now? 

The Soroban site that you linked is one of the best that I have seen on the web.  I own the Nurture Minds booklets and worked on the material with my DD in the spring.  We also own a digital  MathSecrets booklet that I don't recommend because it is filled with colorful advertising across the top of each page and makes printing a costly, ink wasting exercise.

 

My 5 yo DD could easily count to 9 and perform addition without a carry on the abacus.  We worked on 5s and 10s complements (big and little friends) and then stopped.  We use Essentials A/B and MUS, but have not performed any Anzan.  I may pick things back up later, and DD is still young.  She was just about ready to perform addition with the friends when we stopped..

 

I'm sorry that I haven't been very helpful.

[mathnerd]

Thank you, Heather. I also found a few soroban apps on the itunes store. I will download them to see how they work. My ultimate goal is to teach my son Anzan in a year. I am frustrated to see how slow he is when doing complicated math.

some of the apps are here in case this helps:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/master-soroban/id463382105?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abacus-soroban/id285943787?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/japanese-soroban/id419265904?mt=12

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-soroban/id513614906?mt=8

 

[dovrar]

How funny, I was just contemplating teaching the kiddos to use a soroban.  This is very helpful!

[dovrar]

I am currently teaching my dd (nearly 4) Soroban primarily at home. We really love it. I had no previous experience and there was a bit of a learning curve, but there are lots of great resources out there to overcome that hump. I have acquired a ridiculous number of books, software, DVDs, YouTube videos, and even some great apps for IPad. I am on my phone at the moment, but would be more than happy to share links to some of he better resources. In the meantime, there is a thread in another forum where several members (including me) have listed just about every resource they have found, and which ones helped them

:http://forum.brillkids.com/product-discussions-and-reviews/overall-abacus-programs-math-discussion/

 

 

I look forward to the coming links.  I'd also  be interested in knowing which soroban would be a good quality one.

[mathnerd]

Update: There are a few Soroban schools in my city and they are run by Japanese instructors who were trained in Soroban schools in Japan. One of them allows a "trial class" - so we are off to sit in one of them for a family trial class this weekend. My DH is now so fascinated by Soroban after I made him watch several youtube videos on it that he is joining us for the trial class.

[Wind-in-my-hair]

How is learning on a soroban different than on a regular 10x10 abacus? This is a topic I am following. I never heard of soroban until today and from the links I followed it seems intriguing. 

[mathnerd]

The soroban is different from the standard abacus. The calculation methodology is also different. Soroban has dots marking every alternate rod that can be used for the units place of a number while calculating using both round and decimal numbers.

The whole point of learning to use the Soroban is to quickly migrate to using Anzan in all calculations - Anzan is the mental abacus method of calculation - in Anzan, you visualize the pictorial representation of the state of the Soroban for each step of your calculation and you use your finger movements in the air to aid you in the visualization. After you learn Anzan for your current level, you may use the Soroban for more complicated operations while your Anzan skills catch up to your higher level Soroban skills. In the end, when you achieve mastery (there are several levels of mastery), you will be able to do complex problems like 5521.734 x 0.8197 = 4526.165 (I pulled this out of a real soroban mental test)  in your mind and quickly enough to come through with flying colors in timed test situations. Look up some of the youtube videos of soroban competitions - they sure blew my mind away and got me to think about mental math completely differently. I now kick myself for being ignorant of this great and ancient method of doing mental math for so long.

An added advantage of Soroban is that when the child uses mental pictures of the abacus to tie them with computations of numbers, both the left side and right side of the brain are used and a strong connection is formed between both sides of the brain. This has been thought to be somewhat similar to a child learning chess - when they visualize 3 or more chess moves in advance of their opponent, they are using their left and right part of the brain together.

 

Here are links to soroban handbooks that you can review to see how the soroban method works.

http://abacus.etherwork.net/soroban/THE%20ABACUS%20HANDBOOK.pdf

http://webhome.idirect.com/~totton/abacus/Abacus_Mystery_of_the_Bead.pdf

[Heathermomster]

I have a few ???s and could use some feedback.

 

What are the pre-soroban math sense activities that one should do prior to teaching the abacus?

How high should a child be able to count prior to Soroban abacus introduction?

Should the student understand place value ahead of time?

What number names do you use? For example, is the number 11 called eleven or one- ten- one?

What is the appropriate age to teach Sororban? I see aged 7 bantered about, but it seems more than a few people start at aged 4.

Is there a math program available to the US market that fully incorporates Soroban into their scope and sequence for grades K-8?

Are Japanese school children actually using Anzan during their school day, or is it an after school activity?

As I teach my DD, I want her to understand math conceptually, develop a solid numbers sense, and accurately perform all aspects of arithmetic Adding or subtracting at supersonic speeds does not really matter to me. I see the abacus as a useful tool, I just don't know how to effectively apply its use in my DD's overall math education. Btw, she knows her math facts to 10 already, without drilling or abacus.

 

Basically, these questions hold me back from teaching further use of the abacus.

[dovrar]

I have a few ???s and could use some feedback.

 

What are the pre-soroban math sense activities that one should do prior to teaching the abacus?

How high should a child be able to count prior to Soroban abacus introduction?

Should the student understand place value ahead of time?

What number names do you use? For example, is the number 11 called eleven or one- ten- one?

What is the appropriate age to teach Sororban? I see aged 7 bantered about, but it seems more than a few people start at aged 4.

Is there a math program available to the US market that fully incorporates Soroban into their scope and sequence for grades K-8?

Are Japanese school children actually using Anzan during their school day, or is it an after school activity?

As I teach my DD, I want her to understand math conceptually, develop a solid numbers sense, and accurately perform all aspects of arithmetic Adding or subtracting at supersonic speeds does not really matter to me. I see the abacus as a useful tool, I just don't know how to effectively apply its use in my DD's overall math education. Btw, she knows her math facts to 10 already, without drilling or abacus.

 

Basically, these questions hold me back from teaching further use of the abacus.

 

:bigear:

[mathnerd]

Heather, there is no need to hold back from teaching the use of the abacus. You can use it as a fun hands on manipulative in your curriculum.

 

I am no expert, but this is what I know so far about the sorobam:

There is no pre-soroban math sense activity that is required. In Asia, they start to teach 2 year olds who don't know numbers the rudiments of math on the Soroban.

You don't need to prepare for Soroban, you just start at your level. If the child could count only upto 10, then you can teach operations on numbers upto 10.

The Soroban school I visited says they see most new students enrolling in the 3-7 years range.

There are no math programs in the US market incorporating Soroban. Soroban teaches you a kind of "regrouping" based on beads according to their system to perform mathematical operation. For each level of Soroban, when you master it, you can transition to Anzan. It is not a K-8 math curriculum - just a way to work with numbers (small/big/super large) in your brain. It is a different way to handle math operations while ramping up speed of calculations.

I believe that Japanese schools dropped Soroban for a while in favor of computers and calculators and that now, they are going back to their old roots and reintroducing soroban in their curriculum. There are a lot of Asian countries and some European countries where the soroban method has caught on and they are adopting it for their elementary grades.

I would say that you should use a "conventional" math program as a math spine - e.g. Singapore Math. Soroban should be considered an add-on to improve computational fluency.

If I learn more about it, I will update this thread.

 

FYI: There are a ton of threads on the soroban for very young kids on the Brillkids forum that Kerileanne referred to upthread. There are plenty of people there who use soroban for teaching their preschoolers math. They also have a lot of experiences to share and resources for parents.

Good luck.

[mathnerd]

Followup after my son started soroban classes: they start from the very basics. The curriculum is one that they have developed inhouse. But, even prek kids can start on soroban (there were a few enrolled and doing well). My son started with addition and subtraction of numbers below 5. The problems were simple: 1+2-1-2, 1+3-2-1 etc. The key was to do these operations using the soroban beads and not to use "conventional" math methods to arrive at the answer. The next level is to move to numbers using a single 5 bead: 1+2-3+5, 2+5-1-5 etc. And then it moves on to addition and subtraction using 6, 7, 8, 9 in his current book.

The speed at which my son is moving beads and getting to the answer is far greater than when he is doing math with pencil and paper. He is just a beginner. I am thinking that his speed will improve several fold when he learns anzan.

My impression so far - the speed of computation is greatly improved using this method - a huge plus for my son with processing speed issues. It looks like more of a "fun" math game for kids in addition to being a huge memory and right brain development tool than a "math concept learning tool". I felt that it makes arithmetic operations "instinctive" and develops a very high level of autiomaticity to it. So much so that arithmetic using this method is faster than entering numbers into a calculator. 

This program is to be considered an "add on" to any math "spine". It can not replace the Singapore Math program that my son is doing in terms of learning math concepts. And I prefer to teach math concepts and solidify them in my child's mind using a conventional math program and then letting him practice the already learnt concepts on the soroban.

The key to mastery of soroban/anzan is verbal practice every day for 5-10 minutes - the parent reads out problems from a sheet of paper and the child uses the soroban to figure the solution. This is similar to regular musical instrument practice - very essential to develop the muscle memory and fluency and you need to make the time commitment to get better at this skill.