Explore Really Big Numbers with an Abacus | Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

1, 2, 3, 4 ... you can't help but be proud when your child first repeat the numbers 1 to 10.

And once they've got those, it's very tempting to "teach" them up to 20 and onward.

I think a great next step is really BIG numbers.

Not 21, 22, 23 but 30, 40, 50 to 100 and then 200, 300, 400 to 1,000. And once they've got those some really big multi-stage addition!

The fabulous thing is that the average 3 or 4 year old who can count to 10 can have enormous fun with these big numbers with the help of a simple abacus.

And this will give them really important hands on experience of 3 critical maths skills ...

A sense of size
Base 10
Multi-column arithmetic

Slow down - I hear you shout! This is way too much for under 5s.

But it really isn't - any child who can count to 10 will get it. And the problem is that if children don't have lots of visual hands on experience of manipulating big quantities in the early years they will struggle with these concepts when they have to use them as abstract ideas represented by numerals and signs at school.

These 3 concepts are so important because ...
1. Without a sense of size children can't "feel" if they're even in the ball park with big sums
2. Without a visual image that all our numbers are blocks of 10 plus 9 "left overs" children won't recognise the patterns in numbers that allow us to do mental arithmetic
3. Without lots of hands on experience counting and putting together big numbers in blocks of 10 and 100s all of those curious movement of numbers through columns remain a mystery

So how can an abacus help?

Well, there are lots of games that you can play - I will cover these in a separate post - but one of the best things about an abacus is that you can use it in everyday conversations.

I've shared just a few examples of how we've used it below, but basically just grab it whenever you're talking about big numbers or putting numbers together and spend some with your child swishing the beads around to represent those numbers.

Counting in 10s - How Old Am I and How Old Is Mummy?

3 is really ever so grown up you know! But not quite as grown up as mummy who is ... shh ... mumble mumble ... 43 which is 4 whole rows on the abacus ... 10, 20, 30, 40 ... plus 3 extras so mummy is a whole 4 rows, 40 years older than me.

Hundreds - How Old is Grandma?

Sometimes we're very cheeky to grandma and sing "my old gran's a hundred, she wears a funny hat ..." ... we know she's not really 100 but we're not quite sure how old she is.

After much finger wagging, grandma admits to 70 which is 7 rows on the abacus - 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 ... that's almost 3 whole rows ... 10, 20, 30 years more than mummy.

But 2 rows ... 10, 20 years ... less than great grandma who really is almost 100 ... 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 ...

... and Coco, our beloved family cat who died at Easter, would actually have been 100 ... 10 whole rows this year!

Thousands - When Were the Romans?

I'm not sure how Romans originally came up but they did. And after a bit of confusion between them and robots and whether the robots came before the vikings (!) we talked about them coming to England along time ago, about the time that Jesus was born and that this was 2,000 years ago.

We talked about 2,000 being the same as 20 abacuses - and we swished all 100 beads backwards and forwards 20 times to count to 2,000.

Then in a super cool trip to the Egyptian room at the British Museum we discovered that lots of the enormous statues were even older than Jesus and the ~~Robots~~ Romans. Some of them were 1,000 years ... 10 abacuses - older than Jesus and some of them were more than 2,000 years ... 20 abacuses ... older, wow!

... really the opportunities are endless but I promise that swishing those abacus beads about and counting in 10s and 100s will provide a brilliant foundation for enjoying big numbers at school.

One word of warning when you are buying an abacus - do make sure it has 10 rows of 10 beads each as some that you can buy don't which is missing the whole point of it. We have got this lovely wooden abacus from Hape but Melissa and Doug and Plan Toys also do nice ones.

If you've got great maths and number posts please do link them up below