In today’s world of modern Mathematics, you would surely have heard about “Abacus” somewhere, maybe in your conversation with school teachers during the PTM or while interacting with some of the fellow parents during your child’s birthday bash or simply while browsing some blogs on internet or watching videos on youtube. Let us today understand the basics of Abacus to unravel its mystery, including the What, Why, When and How.
What is Abacus
- In its simplest form we can define Abacus as the world’s first and oldest non-digital calculator. The basic purpose is to use for counting and arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, division and multiplication).
- It is a rectangular shaped frame (mostly made of wood) and consists of a two-dimensional array of beads which is the most effective way to learn numbers, especially for young children.
- Learning Abacus is like learning a new language (other than your mother tongue), and hence requires dedicated focus and attention.
Learning Methodology
- Abacus is based on a set of concepts and formulas called as Friends (Big Friends ad Small Friends)
- In the beginning the first step is for the child to move or place the bead in a specific way to represent each number from 0 to 9, and then scale it to next level to represent double digit numbers
- A child uses the physical Abacus tool only in the first few months and gradually does all the arithmetic calculations by Visualization (using finger movement) using the finger movement whereby he forms the impression of tools and beads in his mind for every number or every calculation step.
- If practiced consistently under professional guidance, gradually a child develops the ability to use even both hands simultaneously to do the finger movement and at such a fast pace that it seems unbelievable phenomenon to us unless we see this happening live
Why should Parents choose Abacus (Benefits of Abacus)
As a parent you would be interested to know why should you choose Abacus for your child. We are listing below some of the facts and reasons that will help you realize the value of Abacus and the plethora of opportunities it will bring for our child. We are confident that this reading time of 10 minutes will help you make the right decision for your child’s future.
- Most parents may not be aware that Abacus tremendously increases brain development and the ability to focus/concentrate since it is based on hand-eye-ear coordination (a very effective brain exercise).
- The ability to perform arithmetic calculations mentally is just one of the tangible benefits visible to us from the naked eye. In reality, we cannot even imagine the numerous benefits that a child will get throughout his life as a result of increased focus and concentration level
- Modern studies have proved that the maximum brain development happens only until the age of only 13 or 14 years. Hence its strongly recommended for a child to use Abacus at an early age starting 5 or 6 yrs
- As a parent, you can give your child the lifetime gift of self-confidence in form of Abacus since it helps to remove Maths Phobia from kids. The kids will eventually learn to do all arithmetic operations using visualization (without paper and pen) and this approach makes numbers your child’s best friends.
- Use of visualization approach also lead to enhanced and more creative imagination skills
- Helps your child to improve the photogenic memory
When should you start learning Abacus
As we stated earlier in this blog, learning Abacus is like learning a new language. And for anything new, the sooner we start the better it is. Hence we recommend the young age of 5 yrs as the best point to start learning Abacus.
Remember that our brain is most active until the age of 15 yrs, so 5 to 15 yrs is the ideal age to learn Abacus (sooner the better).
You may relate this with any activity like learning to drive. Lets compare a case study where a child of 15 yrs (lets say Joy) learns to drive, and also someone learns to drive at 40 yrs age (lets say Harold). You can easily note the difference in the level of confidence they both have while driving. Of-course Joy will drive with much more fluency and higher confidence as compared to Harold, and Joy will also have much faster reflexes while driving simply because his brain is more adaptive to learning new things.
The same principle applies in case of Abacus as well, so we recommend to enroll your child at an early age for higher fluency and confidence. Please also be aware that on the higher side, there is no age limit to learn Abacus even though we have seen students upto age of 15 yrs more interested in learning Abacus.
What is the best way to learn Abacus?
We strongly recommend that Abacus should be taught only by experts or seasoned professionals to ensure the correct way of learning. We do not recommend parents to teach Abacus at home unless you are an expert in this domain. At Mathcruise we take pride in ensuring that the child is always fully comfortable with the trainer and actually enjoys every training session, thus producing the best results in shortest possible time.
Here is the recommended Learning Technique:
- Abacus must be learnt at an ideal pace (neither too slow nor too fast). Please be aware that its a long term course (6 – 27 month) and we must not expect results in a month or so
- At Mathcruise we ensure that the child daily practices the Abacus concepts for 10 minutes, instead of spending 1 or 2 hrs on any one day in the whole week. What this means is that daily practice of 10 min over 7 days of week (equating to total of 70 min) is at least 10 times more effective than practicing for continuously 70 minutes just once a day
- We typically conduct two classes in a week.
- In the first class, the new concept is taught by the trainer including the practice during the class itself
- In the second class, the child practices the same concept and asks the doubts that he may be facing. This ensures the child fully understands the concept and we are not rushing into just learning the new concepts.
- If this methodology is followed regularly and consistently, it leads to a solid foundation and amazing results are guaranteed. We always ensure this is applied to every Mathcruise student.
Interesting Fact
- Even today kids learn from Abacus-based educational toys at a very young age in a fun way
- Many countries even today use Abacus to teach arithmetic operations as the most effective learning method
- Some of the shopkeepers in countries like Japan still use the Abacus tool instead of a modern age digital calculator
