What comes in your mind when you hear the word ‘abacus’? People usually think that it is only a toy for children. No! It’s an awesome tool which makes learning maths interesting, engaging and riveting. Think about how a simple set of beads and rods can change how your child views maths. Imagine, you are in a treasure hunt and each bead you move make you closer to the treasure. This ancient calculating tool makes addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as easy as child’s play, literally!

But what is abacus exactly? A frame filled with rods of beads each which you can move up and down the rods. Each and every movement of the bead helps you to understand maths in a pictorial format. Children are scared of maths as they see all the numbers and symbols as abstract concepts, like a huge monster of which they do not know the weakness. With the help of the art of abacus, they can learn how to conquer maths and do away with all of their fears about it.

Abacus tool contains a series of rods with beads which moves up and down the rods to represent a series of digit and perform all the different kinds of arithmetic calculations. Usually, the abacus tool comes with an array of rods ranging from nine to seventeen in number in its frame with each rod containing five beads — four in the lower portion and one in the upper portion.

This ancient calculating tool help students in:

1. Improving their mental arithmetic skills and computational power.
2. Improving concentration and memory power.
3. Developing problem-solving abilities.
4. Enhancing speed and accuracy in calculations.
5. Developing love for mathematics through visual learning techniques.
6. Activating right and left brains by using brain gym activities.
7. Building a strong foundation of arithmetic calculation for life long.
8. Eliminating phobia of mathematics.

Different Types of Abacus

1. The Chines Abacus (Suanpan) :- The divider on Chines abacus divides the right and left strings of beads with two beads one side and five beads on the other side.
2. The Russian Abacus :- The rods on a Russian abacus are placed horizontally and beads are moved from right to left.
3. Japanese Abacus (Sorobon):- The Japanese abacus feature wooden and bamboo rods that moves up and down.
4. The Roman Abacus:-In ancient times roman use stone as counters on a table to do calculations.
5. Cranmer Abacus:- Created by Tim Cranmer this abacus is designed to support students vision disabilities.