A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: Episode 1: The AL Abacus

Basics and Beyond Tutoring Students observe 1000 beads on the AL Abacus
 

  I'm going to be writing a series about some of my favorite educational tools and toys in case you are looking for some Christmas gift ideas. (Or just need a tool to help with a specific subject area.) This is by far my favorite math tool of all time. (I know you may not have a favorite math tool of all time, but I get excited about things like this!) The AL Abacus was developed by the creator of RightStart Math Curriculum, and the program centers around the abacus. You do not need to use RightStart Math to benefit from the abacus.

 

The AL Abacus has 10 rows of 5 blue, then 5 yellow beads.

 

Here are some things I love about it:

 

1. Unlike a traditional abacus, the AL Abacus is divided into groups of 5 and 10



Seven is shown as 5 blue and 2 yellow, just like 1 full hand and 2 fingers.




 

 2. The AL abacus mimics your hands.  When you ask a child to hold up 7 fingers, he will probably hold up one whole hand, and 2 more fingers..
















3. The AL Abacus makes adding numbers 5-10 much easier than just memorization by grouping numbers into fives.

Here we can see that 7+6= 5+5+3=13

4. There are many other great ways to use the AL Abacus, but I will show you just one more for this post. On the other side, it uses one bead to represent 1000, 100, 10, and 1 so that you can add large numbers.  Here is the number 1,623 represented on the back side of the AL Abacus.  With this you can learn place value, and how to add and subtract large numbers.

What other ways do you use the AL Abacus?

You can buy an AL Abacus here