Bamboo Cafe Okinawa

5 COMMENTS

  1. Liz, as I mentioned above, it’s great for place value. But it’s also good for teaching the concept of blocking 5’s & 10s. For instance, you learn a lot about what “makes up” 10. Meaning that 7+3 and 2+8 and 4+6 all make 10. You will see that in the beads. So it’s great for that kind of thing… hope that helps!

  2. I learned the abacus when I lived in China YEARS ago. I LOVE it. One of the things it’s really helpful with is teaching kids (and adults) about place value (1s, 10s, 100s) and breaking numbers down by 5s. There are also a lot of fun tricks you learn… like adding 6+6+6+6 (which is the same “hand movement” on the abacus) and eventually you end up with this really cool design on the abacus… I know I sound nerdy.

  3. When I lived in Osaka I actually took abacus (soroban in Japanese) lessons once a week. I totally suck at anything math related but found using the abacus for math problems to be very simple, I impressed even myself. I know there are abacus ‘schools’ on Okinawa but not sure of English language availabilty. From memory there are also competations and official qualifications that one can do to!

  4. Way cool! For further learning fun, there is an awesome system called “Chisenbop” that utilizes fingers as placemarkers much like the beads on an abacus. Using this method it’s possible to multiply incredibly large numbers using only the fingers on your hands! Since I can’t add a link in comments, interested parties will just have to google it. Don’t everybody rush at once… 😛