Rekenrek

This week I was helping my daughter play DreamBox Learning on the iPad. By the way - I love to capture these little moments of math conversation on Instagram, so feel free to follow along and check out my story! 

Anyway, she was having a bit of trouble with one particular type of problem, so I pulled out my favorite tool for helping young kids build their number sense - the rekenrek (affiliate link).

I realized that, while I use the rekenrek all the time in our house, I've never actually highlighted it in a newsletter. And now that parents everywhere are helping their kids with math at home, what better time to get a versatile support tool?

What is a Rekenrek?

The rekenrek (also known as a math rack) is a number sense tool that was originally popularized by the Dutch. You have two rows of ten beads, each with five red and five white beads.

The basic idea of the rekenrek is, like an abacus, to keep track of numbers for simple addition and subtraction. If you want to add three and four, you can pull three beads across the top row, then four beads across the bottom row, then count them all together.

But there is so much more you can do with a rekenrek. The tool can help kids see easily how to make pairs that add to ten, for example. Slide seven beads across - how many more do you need to make ten? The answer is on the other side - three!

Not only that, but the color coding helps further develop a child's sense of how numbers are constructed. Typically, people can't look at a set of seven uniform beads and immediately discern the quantity. There's just too many for us to instinctively count (this is known as subitizing)

But with the color scheme, we can see the seven is composed of all five red beads and two white beads. So we can immediately see the sum of 5 + 2 staring out at us, and we become more comfortable with that math fact.

So it's definitely useful, but how should you use it? After all, you aren't a trained educator. But don't worry, i have some simple tips to make the rekenrek a hit in your household.

Rekenrek Tips

1) When working on the rekenrek with your kids I recommend that you start with the white beads on the right side, and all the beads on the right to begin with. Then, use the left side of the toy as the "active" side where you create your numbers. We want to reinforce the idea of reading from left to right, and if they've ever used rekenreks in the classroom they'll be familiar.

2) As your child gets more comfortable with the tool, you can challenge them to make a number in a different way. You can even make this a challenge: Say "I am thinking of a way to make 9. Can you guess it?"

They may start by sliding over 5 on the top row and 4 on the bottom. But maybe that's not it! They'll need to remove a bead from the bottom and add one to the top - encouraging them to see how the math strategy of compensation works. If they see why 6+3 gets the same answer as 5+4, then later on they'll know why 20+17 gets the same answer as 19+18, but with much less mental effort!

3) Encourage your kids to make as few "moves" as possible. When my daughter started using the rekenrek, she would always slide the beads over one by one, counting as she did so. That's great, and I was happy to let her get confident with counting using this method. But now that she's a bit more confident, I see if she can do 3+4 with only two moves. She has to find a group of three beads and slide them all over at the same time, then do the same thing for four beads.

This challenge encourages my daughter to visualize what "three" looks like on the rekenrek. She'll strengthen her understanding that the word "three" isn't just used for counting, but also for describing an entire quantity. This idea, known as cardinality, is a cornerstone of counting, and is of course a prerequisite for many topics she'll encounter in kindergarten.

I'm not going to lie - my kids get frustrated with math problems, they pitch fits, and sometimes they want to give up. I've found that the rekenrek is a great intervention in these moments. Instead of banging their heads against the wall, they get to play with a tool that helps them push through the struggle they're experiencing. My son particularly enjoys the ten-row rekenrek, where he can explore double digit numbers more easily.

So check it out! Click here to buy a rekenrek on Amazon (affiliate link).