hi,
can anybody pls help me in letting me know how to teach mental math / flash anzan to a 3 year old?
thanx
hi vanichezhiyan,
i’ve put up a few posts (ok well only 3) so far on how to teach mental maths using the abacus…i try to make it as much fun and interesting as possible…
it’s still work in progress as i’ve just started…
hope it will help those who have little or no access to the world of abacus & mental maths…
Hi Baz,
I went through ur blog few days back too…I’m really looking for ur update on mental maths!!!
I have downloaded the mandalas and started working from today…i have been into mandal training for my son few months back.so just cheked with 3 color and it went perfectly well. Thanks for the mandalas…
And regarding abacus, my son is ok upto 5 with the beads,but then he is not so sure if the beads say 4 or 9!! May be a little more practice will do as i cant expect perfection in just 2 or 3 days!!
waiting for ur update…
thanx baz
Hi! I start teaching my child since she was 4 months and now she is 2 years old. How i teaching her is a combination of doman, shichida and montessori methods. You can refer to my blog at http://littlemommy2012.blogspot.com/
Hi evachong,
Good going…Nice that you combine all three…I did all three too and jones genius,tweedle wink,preschool prep, leapfrog and few more too…i have no problem with my son reading , reading numbers or numerals… I’m really looking for teaching him anzan for which i dont get much resources on the technique… How many parents here teach mental maths??? May be they could help!!!
thankx…
you’re welcome vanichezhiyan!
I’ve updated as requested
for the early stages, it’s good to play around with picture cards to make learning fun! personally i think picture cards are the best way to start off. Will add some more exercises in the coming post.
thanks for dropping by
thankx for the update baz… that was wonderful and i now know a bit of mental abacus… So when a bead is pushed up, we move our thumb up and when a bead has to get down we move our forefinger down!!! thats it ryt? so initially if we train the kids with unit beads it would be fine i think…or shud we have to teach them tens,thousands etc toooo? how many picture cards should we have to show? when do we have to check if they have taken everything menally?
For the bottom beads, yes. thumb for adding, forefinger for subtracting.
But for the top beads (number 5 beads) we use only the forefinger for adding (push up) and subtracting (push down).
At the early stage (especially with younger kids) The goal is the ability to translate the abacus beads patterns into a number (and vice versa). So I think showing big numbers should not be a problem. It’s just like how we flash words when we teach reading.
We can always worry about the formulas later on 
Start with showing single digits, and then follow with 2 digits, then 3 digits and so on. if your child knows +1s or -1s… then show the cards in
order. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,…etc… 100,101,102, etc . Show as many as you can, as much as your kid wants!
Make sure it’s fun
If you wanna check for understanding… play number games with the abacus cards!
Thanks and karmas baz…