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How to Make a Chinese Abacus With Cheerios

An abacus is like a calculator except that it uses beads rather than digits to keep track of the numbers. Ancient merchants used abacuses to count the goods they bought and sold. You can create an abacus quickly and easily using common household items such as cardboard, bamboo skewers and Cheerios cereal. If you wish to differentiate two sorts of "beads," also use Fruit Loops or some other colorful, O-shaped cereal.

Things You'll Need

  • 30 Cheerios
  • 30 Fruit Loops
  • 6 bamboo skewers, 10-inch
  • 2 pieces 8-by-10 corrugated cardboard
  • Paper cutter
  • Glue
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Instructions

    • 1

      Cut a piece of corrugated cardboard into two 8-by-10 pieces. Make sure that the ridges of the corrugation run lengthwise. this will ensure that your skewers can easily be inserted later.

    • 2

      Use a paper cutter to slice one of the pieces of cardboard into six even strips. You should now have six 8-inch-long pieces of cardboard.

    • 3

      Separate the strips into sets of three and glue them together in a stack.

    • 4

      Push the skewers into the top piece of stacked cardboard. Leave about an inch between each skewer.

    • 5

      Place five Fruit Loops and five Cheerios on each of the skewers.

    • 6

      Line up the other stack of cardboard and insert the skewers in the corresponding layer of cardboard.

    • 7

      Glue each stack of cardboard to the 8-by-10 piece of cardboard remaining. Be sure that the layer of cardboard with the skewers is the top one, to allow the cereal pieces to slide.

    • 8

      Label each skewer with numerical values such as 1's, 10's, 100's, 1,000's, 10,000's and 100,000's.

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