We all love to see our children succeed academically, but few of us can afford private tutoring programs to help them achieve their true potential.



You can provide your child with the opportunity to improve math skills in your own home, using techniques that are already helping schoolchildren around the world. You can do this by incorporating easy, enjoyable abacus education into your child's free time with Learning Mathematics with the Abacus, a set of books developed specifically for teaching youngsters in grades 2, 3 and 4.

Many schools in Asia, where abacus education is widely popular for teaching mental math/arithmetic, introduce the abacus between kindergarten and 4th grade. Studies show that if a child starts learning the abacus before being taught traditional arithmetic, there is minimal conflict and the child will easily work within both systems. If a child starts the program later, having already received traditional foundations, there may be a slightly extended learning period for the child to accept and integrate the abacus method.

With abacus education, children achieve much more than just excellent math skills. Abacus use can build confidence, provide a sense of achievement, promote intuitive thinking, enhance problem-solving capability, stimulate creativity, and improve concentration and mental endurance.

Abacus calculation relies on the manipulation of beads rather than use of traditional arithmetic. It teaches children to visualize numbers and their relationships and placement values.

"Once children understand numbers, they will probably become fond of mathematics," says Ms. Kimiko Kawano, a researcher at Nippon Medical School, Center for Informatics and Sciences in Japan. She has been studying EEGs of brain waves in subjects doing various mental activities. Her findings show that abacus training develops visualization and memory skills that can help people succeed in other academic areas besides mathematics.

When children use both hands to move the abacus beads to perform arithmetic calculations, there is quick communication between the hands and the brain that stimulates both the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This promotes rapid, balanced whole brain development, which in turn helps your child succeed in other academic areas.

"Abacus students are found to be superior in the accuracy of their memory and the number of digits they are able to memorize when compared with non-abacus learners of the same age. This is because abacus students place numbers on the abacus image in their head as they mentally calculate with the abacus method," says Ms. Shizuko Amaiwa, Professor at Shinshu University, Faculty of Education, in Japan. She is a psychologist who studies the positive effects of abacus education on overall mental ability.

A popular abacus program available exclusively in the United States through NurtureMinds.com, offers books containing simple step-by-step instructions that make learning the abacus fun for children. This set of books, Learning Mathematics with the Abacus, was developed specifically for teaching youngsters in grades 2, 3 and 4 how to master mental math/arithmetic with the abacus. The site also offers the Japanese Soroban abacus, which is ideal for teaching purposes.

You can find all the materials you will need to help your child master mental math/arithmetic and improve school math grades at the above mentioned website. You can also download free pages from the books and see for yourself how effective they can be for teaching your child valuable mental math skills.