Abacus Practice Worksheet

Abacus Practice Worksheet

Read each question carefully and use your knowledge of the abacus to answer.

An abacus is an ancient tool used for counting and calculating. Each rod represents a different place value (ones, tens, hundreds, etc.), and the beads are moved to represent numbers. The image below shows an abacus:

1. On an abacus, the rod on the far right represents the   place.

2. The rod to the left of the ones place represents the   place.

3. If you move 5 beads up on the tens rod, what number does it represent?  

4. Which number is represented if there are 3 beads on the hundreds rod, 1 bead on the tens rod, and 7 beads on the ones rod?

5. Which of these numbers would require using beads on the thousands rod of an abacus?

6. If you have 24 on the abacus and you want to add 5, how many beads would you move on the ones rod?

7. You represent the number 38 on an abacus. How would you change the beads to show 32?

8. An abacus can only be used to count up to 100.

9. Moving beads on the left-most rod of an abacus represents a larger value than moving beads on the right-most rod.

10. Explain in your own words how an abacus helps us understand place value.