Montessori Activity: Addition with Abacus

Lesson from HubPages

Age: From 3 years old

Objectives:

1. To teach children numbers and arithmetic in a tangible and fun way

Materials:

1. Abacus
2. Nummer cards

Directions:

1. All the beads on the bottom row of abacus tool is worth 1 each.

2. For example to teach your child a simple addition like 2+4=?

3. Ask your kid to move all the beads to the left.

4. Ask them to move 2 beads to the right.

5. Now tell the child to move 4 beads from the left to the right.

6. Count the beads together on the right side.

7. Now you get a total of 6 beads.

8. Show the number card 6 to teach number regconition at the same time.

Cost:

One of the best value for money abacus (shown above) and the cheapest I could find in Denmark is from IKEA costing 79 DKK (approx. 14 USD or 17.55 SGD). The first 2 rows are colourless, and thus safe for babies to bite. Also the space between to move the beads are very wide. It stands very well.

References:

http://blessedmom.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-teach-Abacus-to-kids
http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7543804_teach-mathematics-using-abacus.html