Learning the Abacus

My parents gave me weird looks when I told them that I'm taking up abacus.

My colleagues asked me if I'm mad.

My husband told me to do it if I like it.

My students thought I'm so cool to learn abacus at my age.

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My purpose for learning the abacus is actually to coach my own son.
Why coach him personally when there are so many abacus classes out there?
Main reason: I could not find any suitable classes near us (in terms of location and timing). It's either that they do not take in kids so young or they do not have enough students to start the class.

So, I'm taking up the challenge.
Learning from scratch and obtaining Mental Grade 4 and Abacus Grade 5 within 1.5 months is not easy.

It took me 3 lessons (usual is 5 lessons) to obtain Mental Grade 7 and Abacus Grade 8. Quite good for a beginner (according to the principal teaching me).

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Has abacus been useful to me?

YES! I noticed that I'm able to concentrate and focus better. Now, I can do mental calculations in a very noisy environment. I've learnt to shut off any distractions and focus on what I'm doing!

Even better, my mental calculation is so fast that I'm faster than my P5/6 students who are using the calculator. They just can't figure out how I did it! So I'm gaining a different form of respect from them too.

Don't worry about them not being able to use the school's method and such. I'm learning 3G Abacus (a patented system in SG - http://www.3gabacus.com/). It's incorporating number bonds like what they are teaching in Primary school.

After learning it for myself, I do see the relevance towards Singapore's Maths syllabus. I encourage students who have learnt it to make use of it to check their answers (I still make them write down every single step). And it's very similar to the method we teach in P3 to do mental calculations.

After I've mastered it, I hope to further enhance this unique abacus system to allow students to incorporate it into story/problem sums. And I really do hope that this would come true very soon!