How to teach Abacus to kids

Abacus is a great way to teach numbers and arithmetic to kids. There are many ways to teach numbers to kids. Some can be fun and exciting and some can be boring to children of young age. Abacus is a great tool to teach your child simple math such as counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication and even division. It is also used to work with fractions and with finding square and cube roots. Abacus comes from the Greek abax, which means counting board. It consists of beads that can be moved up and down on a series of sticks or strings within a wooden frame. Abacus tool uses beads for numbers making it easier for the child to understand. Below you will find how to teach abacus to kids using various techniques.

Things you need:

Abacus tool - Melissa and Doug classic wooden Abacus

It is a basic 100 bead abacus for kids ages 3 and up. It contains 10 racks and 10 beads in each of them. Children love to play with it because of its amazing color and texture. You can buy it any toy store or in online (amazon).

Kids need to learn what each bead represents in the abacus. Each row of the abacus can be used as a number column. For example, first row is ones column, second row is tens column and then hundreds column and so on.

How to teach counting to kids using abacus:

1. First ask your child to move all the bead to the right.

2. Tell your child to move few beads on one side of the rack. Now ask your kid to count how many beads are on the left and how many beads on the right.

3. Children can also learn numbers 1 to 100 by moving the beads on all the 10 racks.

 How to teach addition to kids using abacus:

All the beads on the bottom row of abacus tool is worth 1 each. For example to teach your child a simple addition like 2+4=? Ask your kid to move all the beads to the right. Ask them to move 2 beads to the left. Now tell the child to move 4 beads from the right to the left. Count the beads together on the left side. Now you get a total of 6 beads.

Another example 10+20 =? Each bead on the second row is worth 10 each. Move 1 bead in the second row to the right. Now move 2 more beads to the right. It makes a total of 3 beads which is equal to 30.

How to teach subtraction to kids using abacus:
 
For example to teach simple subtraction 4-2. Move 4 beads to the left side of the first wire. From that move back 2 beads on the same wire to get the final answer.

You can do multiplication and division using the same concept.