Abacus

[Tybee]

Yesterday at the Goodwill I bought an abacus in the kid's toy section. I always wanted to learn to use one, and I had one for my own kids and never learned how to use it. So last night I started working on it with a youtube video, and it's neat, and I can't wait to start working with it with my granddaughters, who are 7 and 4. Has anybody got any tips on how to learn/teach this thing. I think it could be a really cool math manipulative for them in terms of thinking in bases.

[iris lilies]

Yesterday at the Goodwill I bought an abacus in the kid's toy section. I always wanted to learn to use one, and I had one for my own kids and never learned how to use it. So last night I started working on it with a youtube video, and it's neat, and I can't wait to start working with it with my granddaughters, who are 7 and 4. Has anybody got any tips on how to learn/teach this thing. I think it could be a really cool math manipulative for them in terms of thinking in bases.
This should be right up LDahl’s alley. Didn’t he work daily with those before retiring?

(just kidding you, Ldahl.)

[mschrisgo2]

See if any of the Montessori or Waldorf schools have YouTube or even online instructions. With all of the home schooling going on in the pandemic, someone must have written materials for parents.

[Tybee]

See if any of the Montessori or Waldorf schools have YouTube or even online instructions. With all of the home schooling going on in the pandemic, someone must have written materials for parents.
Thanks, that's a great idea!

[razz]

Somewhere I read that some schools teach the abacus to help students better understand mathematical principles and the kids get really good with them.

[Tybee]

I just showed my granddaughter how it worked and she really enjoyed it. She worked with it the whole 2 hours I was there and did addition and subtraction, and learned more about 1,s, 10's, 100's, and 1000's--the bead rows go up that way, up to a billion on the top row. We're on to multiplication next visit.

[happystuff]

Sounds like you had a good visit and bonding time with your gd!

[bae]

Slide rules are useful in teaching estimation and critical thinking skills.

[herbgeek]

Slide rules are useful in teaching estimation and critical thinking skills.

I was the last class in high school physics to use slide rules. After my year, calculators were allowed. I am pretty good at rough guesses on numbers, and getting the order of magnitude correct. Its a useful skill.

[razz]

Quick question. My late DH had two slide rules as he was taught how to use them. I keep looking at them trying figure if anyone could or would use them today. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Meanwhile back to the OP.

[Tybee]

I used a slide rule in high school. I remember there was a song with slide rule in it, the Sam Cook song "What a Wonderful World."

[jp1]

I was the last class in high school physics to use slide rules. After my year, calculators were allowed. I am pretty good at rough guesses on numbers, and getting the order of magnitude correct. Its a useful skill.

My high school chemistry teacher allowed calculators but also insisted that we learn how to use slide rules because ‘sometimes batteries die, etc’. After that class the slide rule went in a drawer and today I would have no clue how to use one.

[LDAHL]

This should be right up LDahl’s alley. Didn’t he work daily with those before retiring?

(just kidding you, Ldahl.)

We had efficient modern computers as long as you didn’t bend the punch cards.

[jp1]

I used to have a pro-rata wheel just like this at work. (it's used to calculate part year insurance premiums). Unfortunately I seem to have lost it when we moved last fall. Honestly using it is as easy as using an excel worksheet made for the purpose. And if I need to calculate a short period of time like two weeks it's even easier just to use a calculator to divide the annual premium by 365 and multiply that by 14. A pro-rata wheel only becomes useful if one needs to calculate premium for a period where the number of days is not immediately obvious.

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[rosarugosa]

JP: I used to use one of those at work to calculate follow-up dates for employees who had temporary work authorizations.