Lesson 79: Flash magic: an abacus flash sums game
Level 6, Column Tower. PlayBuddy flashes number cards, one at a time. Add them in your head and pick the total.
What your child does, card by card
Game time: Flash Magic. Watch the cards. Add them in your head! PlayBuddy opens the lesson: “Game time! Let's play with the beads!”
Game time: Flash Magic fills the lesson window. PlayBuddy the magician flashes number cards one at a time, 1.2 seconds each, for 8 tricks (3 + 5, 2 + 4 + 3, 6 + 1 + 2, 4 + 3 + 5 + 2, 7 + 2 + 6, 5 + 5 + 4 + 3, 12 + 15 and 21 + 13 + 4); your child adds them in the head and picks the total from three chips below. A wrong trick shows its cards, and the show goes on.
Ta-da! Flash Magic is on the Games page too.
What this lesson trains
Flash sums: numbers seen for a moment and added in the head, the first step of mental arithmetic with an imagined abacus. The same game is free on the Games page, where each right trick makes the next one harder.
Fingers and hands
During the show the answer chips take the hands’ place in the lower window; the abacus is only pictured.
What PlayBuddy and PlayType say
PlayBuddy: “Game time! Let's play with the beads!”
PlayBuddy: “Click Let's Begin, or press Enter!”
PlayType: “Now do it in your head.”
Stars
A finished round earns the lesson’s stars; a miss costs nothing.