CMA is designed to improve not only on a child's calculating ability and his/her understanding of arithmetic, but also to increase the memory power and creativity, the concentration level and the listening skill, as well as the ability to analyze problem. On top of loving math for lifelong success, our ultimate goal is to build the child's confidence level in their school work and life.
By stimulating both the left and the right sides of the brain during the training process, experts believe that abacus & image abacus training is the key to optimal learning capability.
Although calculators and computers have replaced human brain in computing numbers, learning abacus is a must for every child because it is instrumental in developing whole brain and lifetime skills. Using abacus requires co-ordination of the main nerves of the human body such as sight, sound and finger movement which will induce growth of brain cells. The mind undergoes three main stages of development namely physical contact, logical explanation and visualisation throughout the process and the abacus acts as a medium that connects the three stages. More than 80% of the world population is right-handed and right-handed people normally have more developed left brain with less developed right brain. While the creativity side of the right brain is more than a thousand times than that of the left brain. Learning abacus will stimulate the development of the right brain at an early age.
Arithmetic is remarkably important for helping young children build up a solid academic foundation. Teachers who work with young children know that it is not easy to introduce the concept of numbers and their values. For young children to comprehend the concepts of mathematics when presented only in the abstract form will take a long process. Abstract means using nothing but brain power to solve problems. It is difficult for children to comprehend numeric relationships without using concrete objects such as abacus beads to relate numeric values.
Learning how to compute numbers mentally is equally important, as it will effectively tap the unexploited parts of the brain and therefore promotes the overall intelligence. The practice of mental arithmetic will sharpen the imaginative and memory power. According to a scientific research, a child who lacks good mental formation can experience a sharp decline in mental abilities even as early as the age of 20. On the other hand, a child who receives this formation by the age of 12 will continue to remain brilliant even up to the age of 70.
First, conventional abacus lessons used only single hand teaching. As a result, only the left hemisphere of the brain is stimulated and right half of the brain is ignored. Also, most of conventional abacus lessons used 2/5 abacus (2 beads on top and 5 beads at the bottom) and CMA uses 1/4 abacus (1 bead on top and 4 beads at the bottom) in the training process.