I was just asked to visit a group of homeschooling families as a sort of “guest lecturer” and explain how we use an abacus for math. Frankly, I was asked because they don’t know anyone who uses an abacus. My experience is teaching the first third of RightStart Level A to my three year old, which doesn’t amount to tons. But I would like to give them a decent amount of information. I have a soroban abacus and some documentation on how to use it that I can introduce, and I can explain the concept of the RightStart abacus and do addition and subtraction on it. But I have no idea how, later in the program, it’s used to teach multiplication and division. Can anyone give me a brief overview that I can explain to them?
I’ve never done multiplication or division, but have seen it explained on youtube videos. I’d look there just so that you can at least explain the concept.
Skip counting is one way to do multiplication on the RS abacus.
Another way is to use the rows If the question is 7x5 you slide cross 7 beads on 5 rows. And count the total.
I remember looking it up a few years ago. I can’t recall how to do it beyond that. And it limits one to 100 beads.
I am sure the soroban way is different.