All About Abacus Training

[Picolo]

achin and Usha,

PMed to you.

Usha,
The medium of instruction is a mixture of Mandarin and English. About 1 month into the course, the children will have to memorise or recite some ‘rules’ in Chinese. If your children are not able to understand Mandarin, this may pose a problem. More ‘rules’ will be introduced as the level of difficulty increases.

Picolo

[san76]

[Moderator's note: Topics merged.]


Hi all parents,

Please share your opinion with me. I wanted to know if learning abacus is good? I know that learning more is always good for the kid. But most important is, does it helps in the future?

I wanted to enrol him to learn Abacus but some of my friends telling me the kid will be unable to adapt to school teaching after they adopt the abacus style. True?

At the same time please advise me is Pri1 too old to learn?

Thank you.

[metz]

I have heard mixed reviews about abacus too. However, learning abacus proves helpful for my P1 niece. Previously, she’s rather weak in Math, as in she still needs to use finger counting when doing simple addition/subtraction. But after attending the abacus enrichment conducted within her primary school premise, she can do mental math now. Do you know if your son’s school provides such enrichment classes?

[san76]

Hi,


Is this course provide by the school? or the school engage for their pupils? Mine, I am not sure about the school. I am only keen in letting him learn ouside school time. Perhaps saturday so that it will not clash with his school work and abacus.

Thanks

[metz]

Hi San76,


I believe the abacus enrichment is engaged by the school as my niece has to fork out extra money for the lessons.
My friend is also urging me to send my son for abacus classes, er, to train and develop the memory aspect further. I'm still undecided. :? Would like to hear more from other parents on the effectiveness of abacus too.

[phantom]

My nephew attended abacus class, and it does helps in his calculation, actually, it seems like teaching them to calculate using abacus is much easier for them. My nephew is now in primary 1 and he can compute mentally quite fast.


I also send my 5 year old son to abacus. As he attended some other course where they also do math, he will switch between different way of doing math like counting finger and beads, and use abacus while doing abacus worksheet. He can do much more complicated arithmetic using abacus.

[jedamum]

Hi,

Have you read http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0? We do have some mini discussion on the abacus here and it seems like most parents find it to be useful for their children.

My ds1 who had started abacus in K1 dropped it after a year because we have problems getting him to memorise the formula and found out that for the strings of numbers that require him to add up, he is using number bonds instead of the formulas (eg 3+2+7+8+6=? instead of using the formula and add in sequence, he computed 3 and 7, 2 and 8 together then add 6 to get 26). Abacus works for some kids, but for P1 students, sometimes parents prefer to go for MOE math-approved enrichment to tackle the primary school syllabus or Kumon to drill on the mathematics basics.

jmho.

[Imp75]

any english conducted abacus classes to recommend for toddlers in the north, preferably sembawang area thanks

[san76]

Welcome to this abacus topics. I really do not know much about this aspect. I will not let him learn from his pri sch. It will have too much for him to do for the day in school. Hmm.... I think learning off sch hour is the best. His brain will br free. CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT IS DUAL HANDS ABACUS LIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stress or not? :faint:

[phantom]

san76:

Welcome to this abacus topics. I really do not know much about this aspect. I will not let him learn from his pri sch. It will have too much for him to do for the day in school. Hmm.... I think learning off sch hour is the best. His brain will br free. CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT IS DUAL HANDS ABACUS LIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stress or not? :faint:

Dual hand abacus means use 2 hand to speed things up. In traditional abacus, if there is an overflow of the digit to the next level, they need 2 steps to complete that. In 2 hand abacus, instead of 2 steps, they use 2 hand to shorten that. That is what I learn from my kid's CMA lesson, not sure if there are others. :?