Imaginarium Abacus

Just waiting for Santa to place it under the tree.

Our Imaginarium Abacus has withstood twin 5-year old boys who love it and play with it constantly. Seems much sturdier than most models I have found. Colors are bright, useful for teaching addition and subtraction within range of 1-100, and if you use the rods as 1's, 10's, 100's, and so forth, you could count up to 10 billion (not that I really want to). My kids have used it to check their adding while playing a favorite computer math game (Bingo Bugs), to "time" each other by keeping track of how many seconds ("See if you can get back by the time I get to the end of the green row!"), and they love the feel and sound of the wooden beads. This has been a great toy for us.

I loved the look of this abacus and was so excited to get it for our kids. Within a week though the two side wooden pieces had spread apart and all the pegs fell down! We have had trouble with it ever since and now it is to the point that we really need to just throw it away. Every time we touch it or pick it up it comes apart.