Since young, we have been taught how to use paper and pencil to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Then when we got older, we got dependent on our calculators. We even have calculator function in our mobile phones. By and by, we lost touch with the ability to do mental calculations, or rather, we become lazy to do so.
If not for Jiaheng, I guess I will never be associated with ABACUS.
Jiaheng has always been fascinated with numbers. We kind of regretted teaching him the term "infinity" because after that he kept 'stalking' Kai Hock and me with big numbers. How many hundred plus how many hundred, then subtraction by how many hundred. Then it grew to thousands. Really tak boleh tahan liao.
Then Papa came up with this brilliant idea to send Jiaheng for abacus class. Then he can do the big numbers plus and minus himself. Then we can be SPARED...!
That sparked it all off. The love story of Jiaheng and abacus...
Jiaheng kept saying that he can see the abacus beads stirring in his head. He always looks forward to going for his abacus class. And that is where we learnt the phrase "嘿！嘿！你真棒！"
Jiaheng is now in Grade 8 for Mental arithmetic and Grade 9 for Abacus arithmetic. Something new for me. Abacus also got grading?! like piano??? The children will start off with Grade 13, then slowly progress up to Grade 1. Then go on to Level 1 and finally reach Level 10. When you reach Level 10, you are really the Master (Shi fu) liao.
Currently, Jiaheng is doing 2 digits, 10 numbers for his Abacus; and 1 digit, 6 numbers for his Mental, plus and minus included.
We are happy that Jiaheng is enjoying his abacus lessons. Ultimately, we are not looking at a boy genius in our house, rather, we are looking at brain stimulation. If we don't stimulate his brain when his brain cells are growing, are we only going to do it when his brain cells start to die?
When we were young, our parents are not aware about child-hood development. They are not aware that children develops most and best before the age of 6. Now, we know it and we want to do something about it so that we don't short-change our children.
There are many arguments about whether single hand stirring or two-hands stirring is better. I guess there are pros and cons to everything. So, we fixed our criteria on the fact that his school's style can stimulate both sides of the brain cos he uses both hands to stir the beads.
... and the by-product is we got a calculator-Quek in the family. :P
----- posted by Mommy
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