How to Make a Pipe Cleaner and Bead Abacus

Category Educational

Kids Abacus for Learning - front with colored beads and number beads on pipe cleaners

Long before there was a written numeral system, the abacus was used as a calculating tool. Make a simple one to help teach your young children counting and more advanced math. This is a page about how to make a pipe cleaner and bead abacus.

Solutions

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Kids Abacus for Learning

By 15mhhm15 [1,221 Posts, 2,631 Comments]

June 30, 2017

An easy and educational learning tool for kids learning their name, numbers and alphabet. Made with soft felt and pipe cleaners perfect to bring on the go and fits in your child's hand. As you can see it got a lot of usage from the bent pipe cleaners!

Total Time: 30 minutes

Supplies:

assorted colored beads
letter beads
pipe cleaners
felt
cardboard
hot glue

Steps:

I cut out a piece of sturdy cardboard 6 by 9 inches. Using hot glue apply glue on the cardboard and stick black felt down covering the entire cardboard front and back.
Using assorted pipe cleaners thread on beads of your choice. For the first row, I put my child's name, then rows abacus style of 1 to 10, then at the bottom, two rows of alphabet letters. Once complete threading the beads in the order you would like, figure the layout you would like them to be on the felt. I put name, numbers, and alphabet.

Grabbing the pipe cleaners with your beads in the order you like, one by one, place over the felt and fold over the felt on both sides. Where you fold the pipe cleaners on both sides apply hot glue to hold the pipe cleaners down. Repeat until you are finished.
Using extra black felt or any felt, cover the backing where the pipe cleaners were glued so it does not get snagged. Sometimes the pipe cleaners ends could be sharp, as well.

Kids Abacus for Learning - back with the pipe cleaners ends covered by felt

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