Fun with an Abacus

by Jeff Bogle | More from this Blogger

05 Mar 2007 10:06 AM

Our daughter celebrated her third birthday this past weekend, and one of the gifts we bought her was an abacus. We chose a wooden abacus made by Imaginarium, which I think is quite colorful and lovely. It has ten rows of beads, with two rows each of five different colors: red, blue, orange, green and yellow. I'm happy to say that so far, my girl loves it! One day out of the gate and the abacus is the early favorite, along with a beautiful wooden high chair and cradle that Grandmom and Grandpop gave her for Baby Nora.

As she is walking past, and this new toy catches her eye, she will shout loudly - "Yay! Abacus!" Once she has the attention of either Mommy or Daddy, she immediately starts to do some addition. The morning after her birthday party, having opened the gift less than 12 hours earlier, she lined up two yellow beads on top of three greens. After counting them out, she proceeded to slide over five of the blue beads beneath them, and said "Look Daddy, 2+3 equals 5!" I almost cried - I mean, she is only just 3!

So far, we have already used the abacus to visualize some basic math concepts (addition, problems adding to 8, and subtraction, by taking just one bead away). We have also made letters (like the 'Y' below) and numbers, and designed funky shapes with it.

My wife picked this abacus up as a Christmas gift originally, but when we realized we had way too many gifts for the holiday season (maybe we will learn to curb this perpetual habit after #2 arrives), we shuttled a handful to the top of our closet and earmarked them as birthday gifts. In fact, we did not buy one additional gift for her birthday. Instead we just rolled with the four books, one giant bubble wand, a couple packs of pretend fruit (apples and strawberries) for her play kitchen and the abacus - all of which were left over from (excess) Christmas shopping.

I don't remember having had or ever playing with an abacus as a child, but I must admit, I like it as much as she does! It is really cool and quite different, as far as a toy goes. It is adaptable (educational or just plain fun) and decidedly not electronic or modern, which is right up my alley. I am glad she still likes this kind of a gift - despite being raised in a high-tech, short-attention-span kind of world. The old wooden toys of yesteryear, like this abacus, are still viable as gifts and can still be enjoyed and appreciated.

Does your child have a favorite "old" or classic toy?

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Learn more about Jeff Bogle

Jeff is married to a lovely redhead and is fortunate to have in his life an amazing young lady, age three.

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