The Soroban: A Progress Report

As promised, here is an update of my son's progress doing math using the soroban. Read about his beginnings here.

For those of you wanting a quick recap here it goes:

My son is in the first grade and after helping him with his math homework, and seeing the way his school was trying to get him to perform arithmetic, I felt compelled to find a more tangible way to introduce math concepts to him. I really wanted to have an abacus on hand.

One thing led to another and I found a franchise in my area (Aloha Mind Math) that teaches children math concepts using the abacus. They don't use the 10-beaded abacus most of us are familiar with; instead they use the Japanese version described in my first hub.

Overall, using the soroban engages both side of the brain and I am confident that the more my son practices arithmetic using the soroban, and learns to visualize it for mental calculations, the sharper he will be.

This first video demonstrates my son's ability to perform mental calculations after 4 classes.

This second video was shot after 8 classes.

Click here to see the progress made 4 months after this last video was posted.

Below are a couple of videos I pulled from YouTube. They are snippets of stories about the continued use of the soroban in Japan and how it is common for young students to perform calculations quickly and accurately in their mind. The videos are interesting, to say the least.

For more information on the benefits of using the soroban for math please see my initial hub and scroll down to the Aloha Math video. It does a great job of answering the frequently asked questions.