Bead Village — Lesson 9: Read the beads

What your child does, card by card

Read the beads. Practice day! PlayBuddy opens the lesson: “Practice time. Let's get quicker and better.”

Read from the left: hundreds, then tens, then ones. Yellow marks the hundreds rod, the tens rod and the ones rod while the kids talk about them. The abacus makes 352, then clears. Above, “7”, “40” and “352” take turns to glow. Its words: “Count the beads on each rod.”

Try it: your child reads 7 and 40, with a green ring on the next bead to move.

Read five in a row: a mission of 8 tasks with a count of right answers in a row, with the best kept. Your child must read 8, 25, 61, 7, 90, 143, 506 and 870. For every task the beads hold still and three numbers wait below; one of them is right.

Copy me: the beads show 23, 58 and 71 and your child answers by tapping the drawn fingers, the hands window glowing.

In your head: the beads flash 36, 63 and 306, one at a time, for 1.8 seconds each and hide; your child picks the number from 36, 63 and 306, then sees the beads again.

You're ready! You can read the beads without the little numbers.

What this lesson trains

16 answers in about five minutes. The tasks take 0 bead moves in all: every one with bottom beads, the top bead stays up. Up to 870, read and set from the left. Then 3 quick looks in your head.

It starts with doing: read 7 and 40.

Fingers and hands

Below the abacus the drawn hands show zero and 7, 8, 23, 25, 40, 58, 61, 71 and 90 here, finger for bead: the left hand counts the tens, the right hand the ones.

Two hands hold up to 99, so past 99 they fold and fade with a note (“Our hands stop at 99. The beads go on.”) while the beads carry on.

In Copy me the beads lead with 23, 58 and 71, and your child answers on the fingers: the reverse of making a number on the beads.

What PlayBuddy and PlayType say

PlayBuddy: “Three, five, two. That makes three hundred fifty-two!”

Stars

16 answers: 1 slip still gives three stars; up to 4, two stars.