Preparation Of Cardboard Bases
1. Collect and flatten a bunch of corrugated
cardboard. Cut two 8x10" pieces of cardboard for each child in your class.
A paper cutter works well for this.
2.Cut one of the pieces into 6 strips
as shown in Figure 1.
3.Glue 3 strips on top of each other and
to the top of the second 8x10" piece of cardboard (Figure 2). Tacky glue (from
craft stores) works well for this. Note the direction of the ridges in the
cardboard. This is very important because the skewers must slide into the
ridges.
4.Glue the remaining 3 strips to the bottom.
Assembly
1. Put the beads in bowls or flat containers and have each child select
60 beads. Each stick will get 10 beads, 5 of each of 2 colors. All of the
sticks can use the same color scheme or they can be different.
2. Slide a skewer through one of the "tubes" at the bottom of the abacus.
Put 10 beads on it. Then slide the end of the skewer through one of the "tubes"
at the top of the abacus. 3. Do this for all 6 skewers.
4. If the skewers are loose, put a strip of masking tape over each end to
keep them from sliding out.
5. Label the abacus with the place values (1's, 10's, 100's, 1000's, 10000's,
100000's) if you like.
