s/o lets talk more generally about abacuses (or if you prefer, abaci)

[rose]

I've been considering getting an abacus just as a math manipulative or as an enrichment for my little ones. The types are confusing me. Can someone tell me why I would want to choose one over the other? Do you have one? Does it just sit on a shelf somewhere ignored or did you find it helpful? Thoughts?

[Jackie]

We like the AL abacus. The colors changing halfway through the line and halfway down the abacus make seeing the numbers easy and eventually automatic.

 

Editing to answer the other part of the question: This is the one manipulative we come back to again and again. It's been useful for all sorts of elementary math concepts.

Edited August 28, 2017 by Jackie

[Syllieann]

We have several. I have a small homemade abacus similar to this. https://maggielane.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/4-15-13-021.jpg

We also have the physical al abacus and the app. All were exciting for the first few days, but everyone has preferred c rods and hundred flats...myself included. Now the abaci sit unused. For many things the c rods are less abstract than the abacus. I also think the are better for building number sense. The abacus is easier to deal with if you have a young child in the home who may be inclined to eat the c rods, and it looks in your sig as if that is the case.

Edited August 28, 2017 by Syllieann

[Guest]

Abacus is the only math manipulative one of my kids has ever used, and the one the other kid has used the most by far.

 

We have two. One is a at one that's all different colors. The other is a great, big abacus with 14 or 12 rows going one way, then three columns going the other way. They're both fine for how we use them.

 

I basically just encourage the kids to use the abacus as a whole BUNCH of fingers for counting on their fingers. As they use higher numbers, grouping and regrouping starts happening naturally.

[Kiara.I]

We use Rightstart math, so we use the AL abacus very frequently. When the kids matter how to do it without the abacus, they stop using it (for that type of problem, and then it gets used again for the next type they're learning.

 

The colour divisions do make it very helpful. And the second side allows calculations in the thousands so it gets used for more than the basic 1-100 stuff.

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[SoCal_Bear]

well there are the 10 beads on a row x 10 row types which is what people are referring to above. I found those useful for regrouping and using when my son was working through addition and subtraction.

 

Then there are things like the Soroban abacus which is a completely different deal that I just got involved with because my son fell in love with abacus math after doing a summer camp focuses on it. I'm new at this but it is a type of mental math computation using the abacus. 

Edited August 28, 2017 by calbear

[nixpix5]

We also use rightstart and Montessori style so our abacus is in constant rotation. We love it and they are quite versatile. I think the beauty of an abacus, especially our AL, is that it visually represents double digits, triple digits etc well. It gives the child a way to quickly scan and concretely grasp what that number is. Like mentioned above, children move out of it once they can get it and then will use it again for the next level of problems. My 6 year old can add multi digits in his head with carrying because he tells me he can see an abacus in his brain :)

[Sarah0000]

We have the AL abacus as well. In our house it's used more at 2-3 years of age because it can't be played with quite as much as c rods and other manipulatives so the young child focuses a little better. I've made it a point to teach ODS how to do computations with it anyway but he just doesn't need it.

[Petrichor]

We've had one, just sitting on a shelf for about 6 years now. Basic, 100 bead, Melissa and Doug brand.  I couldn't figure out how to use it for math until recently (regrouping in addition and subtraction). Before then, it was a pretty little decoration that would sometimes have the beads moved around by toddlers or for sound effect. 

 

I don't love it, but DS finds it useful. I'm tempted to try the AL abacus or another type of abacus, but I'd have to figure out how to use it before I could justify purchasing it. 

[Sherry in OH]

We have the AL abacus.  We used it extensively in first grade and to some extent in second and third grades.  I prefer it to frogs, cars, and other manipulatives because it didn't roll off the table, have wars, or any other imaginative things children do with manipulatives during math lessons.

[luuknam]

In elementary school, we had something like this:

 

https://www.amazon.com/NIUPIKA-Counting-Educational-Subtract-Calculating/dp/B01LND60XS/ref=sr_1_40?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1503977773&sr=1-40&keywords=abacus

 

When Celery was 5yo or so, we briefly had one like that as well (not the exact one I linked to), but it broke. Overall, we're not real big on manipulatives here. I like how the above type has 10 beads for each place value and you can move them to the other side where you don't even see them at all. I've never used the kind of abacus that seems to be common in the US though.

Edited August 29, 2017 by luuknam

[blondchen]

The AL abacus is awesome, and it gets daily use in our house, sometimes apart from an actual math lesson. We have one for each child (5th, 3rd and K) and they all use it frequently (we use RightStart math, so use of the AL abacus is built in to the curriculum).

 

Here are some helpful links about it from Kate's Homeschool Math:

 

http://kateshomeschoolmath.com/al-abacus-favorite-homeschool-math-manipulative/

 

http://kateshomeschoolmath.com/ultimate-guide-use-al-abacus-curriculum-videos/

 

[alisha]

I found a Melissa and Doug brand one at a garage sale. It's sturdy and stands on its own, so the child can work the problem easily. I did like how the AL abacus had different colors every 5, and this one didn't, so I fixed that. I took a black sharpie and made a line down the center of the light colored beads the first 5 of the first row, the 2nd 5 of the 2nd row, etc (using a white-out marker (the kind for "erasing" typing or pen) for the dark blue). It has worked great for us for many years and we use it often. We use it for school, for totalling points when playing games, and just to make patterns out of. I also like that it has 100 beads. I think that helps a little with the visual nature of using it-kind of like the base 10 blocks, there's a 1 block, a 10 block and a 100 block--in the abacus, there's the 1 bead, the rows of 10 beads and the whole thing is 10 rows, so the 100 beads. Does any of this even make sense? 

[ScoutTN]

Love, love the AL abacus!  

[deBij]

I love mathwork with an abacus form kids.

 

I recently got a "rekenrek" two rows abacus and it is great for the beginning upto twenty manipulation without being overwhelmed and having to think of tens,hundreds, etc beads.

[PeterPan]

The abacaus from RS comes with a little booklet of instructions, which will give you a jump start. Or you could just buy a level and get sucked into the vortex, hehe. :)

 

Seriously, RS's double-sided abacus is terrific. What works well for us is a stations approach. So we'll build a number or concept with c-rods, with objects, with base  10 picture cards, with the number tiles, with the abacus, write it on the abacus...  Repeat with another number. Now add those two numbers together... My ds needs to see the same concept in lots of contexts, so the RS abacus is one of our tools. It was a good tool for my dd and easy for her to understand. It's pretty abstract and challenging for my ds (who has SLD math), so for him it's one tool of many. 

 

The side 2 of RS's abacus is the bees' knees. If you get their abacus, get their base 10 picture cards and place value cards as well. They don't cost much, and they work well together.

Edited September 3, 2017 by OhElizabeth

[Earthmerlin]

I'm interested in using ours as a way to 'show regrouping'. Can anyone explain this to me? I have a (now) 3rd grader who's learning multi-digit addition & subtraction. Can the regrouping work be shown using an abacus?