Learning Resources 2-Color Desktop Abacus, Red Frame, Color Coded, Math Concepts, Ages 5+

As soon as I opened the package, there was already children waiting to get their hands on this abacus. We homeschool and this is our favorite abacus to work with because we can do so much with it. My daughter in 5th grade still uses it for multiplication and long additions and subtractions. The manual that comes with it shows you exactly how to use the abacus and the different equations you can solve with it. Using an abacus gives children and adults a great understanding of math.

This abacus is inexpensive and very functional. If a small child breaks it you can easily replace it. As a first grader my teacher taught me to use an abacus; this gives a child a significant advantage in grasping the concepts of basic math. You have columns for ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. My three year old daughter now understands that when she gets ten beads of ones that is the same as 1 bead in the hundreds columns and she can count one to a hundred and compare to her wall chart.This is a great learning tool; a child can use their minds and their hands at the same time. The abacus holds their interest.This is a great, inexpensive way to start a child learning math without boring them into inattentiveness. The image doesn't really show it but if you slide all the beads on one wire there is adequate space between the beads on the adjacent wires (which is necessary to really use it). Beads alternate colors at intervals of 5 which facilitates exercises such as counting by fives.We use this abacus to play an educational game with our daughter. We set up a little market in our home and she keeps up with what she has sold using the abacus. I fully expect that she will be able to calculate her gross sales in a few months.I first purchased her the Melissa and Doug abacus which is a cute toy with sliding beads but it isn't functional. As pointed out by a reviewer of that toy it lacks several integral design concepts, i.e. the beads from one wire to another will overlap the adjacent rows when you slide them all over and the beads on the wires are not different colors at 5 bead intervals. In short you can't really use that one.This abacus is actually functional and is a great way to introduce a child to basic math. Recommended.

We homeschool and my kid hates using math manipulatives. Had to force her to do math. Someone suggested an abacus, so I got one to try. The next morning I woke up to my husband giving her math equations and her happily clacking away on it! It was a sanity saver for me and she loves math now.

In the middle of the school year, we moved to a more rigorous school system and I needed to help my first grader catch up to his classmates in math. As a kid I remember having a traditional Fisher Price abacus with rows of ten beads in alternating colors. I never really "got" that abacus.After reading the explanation that came with this one - the logic made perfect sense to me and seems brilliant in its simplicity. It even made me think about how I add in a different, more intuitive way. I believe this helped my son get a handle on beginning addition. He definitely liked moving the beads about and having a physical way of figuring out the problems.We already had Cuisenaire Rods (http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Connecting-Cuisenaire-Introductory/dp/B000F8T9HW) and a Plastic Base Ten Number Concepts Set (http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Base-Ten-Number-Concepts/dp/1564514498) But, for the way his class was learning addition, the abacus was particularly helpful. After using it for a while you start to visualize the answer in your head, and if you don't have the abacus, you can use your 5 fingers on each hand using the same concepts.Sometimes we get out the Cuisenaire Rods or the Base Ten blocks instead - depends on what's getting covered. I'm actually glad I have all three ways of showing math concepts.I will note that my father-in-law, a former high school math teacher, briefly looked at the Abacus declared he didn't get it at all and said we should just get a "chinese" style abacus instead. My husband grew up with a Chinese style abacus (obviously his Dad taught him on that) and also claims he doesn't understand this one at all. (I think he's only put about 3 minutes into looking at it.) But, I'm the one who usually goes over the homework and I "get" it, as does my son, - so, I'm sticking with this one.

I was skeptical about this product, only because I remember my grandfather using a Chinese Abacus, and some of my friends that used similar abacus when they were young and are now essentially being human calculators. My child struggles with math, which common core isn't really helping out (that's a separate conversation). So using something that worked in the past for so many, and what my human calculator friends have been trained to use when they were young, getting an abacus just made sense. So, even with my skepticism of using this abacus, I can say that the concepts are very much the same, and that my son is doing better in math. He's not quite at the human calculator status, but he's only in the 2nd grade. All in all, I recommend this product if your child is having a little bit of a struggle with math, as the will be able to visually see and understand how numbers work.