Abagility Maths Club is an early childhood learning programme offering classroom tuition to young students (4-12) on how to use the Japanese Soroban (abacus) to enhance their mental arithmetic skill. It is a practical, concrete and visual method leading to exceptional mental arithmetic skills.
The skills are taught through the use of a Japanese Soroban, known in South Africa as an abacus. The beads on the abacus are used to represent numbers and the children use these numbers to perform calculations by moving the beads up and down with their fingers. The children are taught to break down numbers into components. Instead of traditionally memorizing maths facts the children continuously manipulate the numbers by breaking them down into these components. They learn to understand how the pieces fit together and in turn visualise not only the process but also the results of their calculations.
This programme teaches children to calculate accurately and speedily making the process of learning more satisfying for the child, and helping to boost their confidence. The results seen from the children are phenomenal and have shown to increase children’s understanding of maths, and quite substantially improve their results across all areas of learning.
Abagility Maths Club provides children with arithmetic and ultimately mental arithmetic skills which can be applied in their day to day school mathematics and which gives them a strong foundation in mathematics and arithmetic.
It is Abagility Maths Club's vision to provide a unique learning experience which makes a difference in the lives of our students through sharing the timeless Japanese technique of mental arithmetic with care, passion and excellence whilst innovatively aligning our curriculum to modern schooling. It is our dream to enthuse one child at a time until we have a nation of inspired, self-confident and mathematically skilled children.
Core Values:
- Caring
- Committed
- Honesty and integrity
- Innovative & creative
- Inspiring
- Passionate
How did Abagility Maths Club come about?
Abagility Maths Club is a local company established in KZN by Tracy Hauptfleisch. Six years ago, Tracy, an MBA Graduate and mom wanted to help her children to grow into balanced, educated and successful individuals. She identified a Japanese abacus maths programme that she felt would make a difference to not only her own children, but to many other children as well. Tracy was inspired by this alternative method which helped children to understand and grasp maths so easily. Tracy and her passionate team have been teaching the skill to children in KZN over the past 6 years.
Tracy felt for a long time that value could be added to her students learning experience on the Japanese abacus by bridging it with school maths. She wanted to introduce a programme which not only gives children the advantages that a Japanese abacus maths programme offers, but that also includes learning material and problem solving in alignment with school type maths. This customised and well-rounded programme bridges the gap between children knowing the Soroban skill and using it in their daily school maths experiences. The programme is able to benefit all children whether they are left or right brained, or good at maths or not.
