In Spain over 500 School centers – public, private, private with public funding- and Academies from all over the country have included the activity as part of their curricular or complementary offer. Check our center network here.
For further information about ALOHA in other countries contact info@aloha-europe.com
We recommend you to speak with the Parents’ Association of your School or with the staff in charge of complementary activities from your Center to raise the possibility of including ALOHA among their educational offering.
You can also enrol your child in one of the many Centers offering ALOHA.
At any rate, the ALOHA delegation from your area will give you further information. Click here to obtain the contact details. If you cannot find them here, please contact info@aloha-europe.com.
There is no specified time to complete all the ALOHA levels, each child will progress at their own pace depending on their needs. In any case, the expected average duration to finish the programme is 4-5 years, although from the first 6 months the benefits of ALOHA are already noticeable.
ALOHA is divided into two itineraries
| Tiny Tots | 10 levels | For children starting the programme aged between 5 and 7 years old. |
| Kids | 8 levels | For children starting the programme aged 8 years or over. |
Children will do one itinerary or another depending on their age when starting ALOHA. Either way, the children will have acquired the same knowledge and will boost the same skills.
Both itineraries are independent one from another. Once finished the Tiny Tots itinerary, it is not necessary to do Kids later.
No, on completion of ALOHA the students will have maximized their superpowers for their lifetime.
Yes, the sessions have been designed to group children with different ages and diverse learning pace. In this way, collaborative learning is encouraged, it is promoted integration and children learn to work in diversity. All this contributes to enhance significant learning and, consequently, the children’s motivation.
The early years matter because, during these first years the brain experiments a greater plasticity as, in this time, all brain connections are formed.
The connections that are not used during this vital stage will be subjected to a “synaptic pruning” process ceasing to form part of the children neuronal net.
The cognitive work carried out by the student during the ALOHA lessons contributes to stimulate these connections so they can pass the “pruning process”. The more connections remain in the children brain, the more competent their adult brain will be.
The ALOHA programme enhances children skills such as attention and concentration, logical thinking, photographic memory, listening capacity…
The first noticeable changes are linked with mathematics and their capacity to keep focused.
All this will have a positive impact on their self-esteem and dexterity to face the daily challenges.
Look at it this way, if the parents of Rafa Nadal, the famous tennis’ player, had thought that their son was just good enough playing tennis and they had not encouraged him to train more, today he would probably not be the world champion he is today…It is the same with good grades. Obtaining good marks is always good news but it does not mean children are making the most out of their potential.
As children successfully pass through the school grades, the difficulty level is increased, so students need to work harder to obtain the same marks as in previous grades.
When children train with ALOHA the memory, the attention and concentration, the logical thinking… they need less study time and effort to keep getting good marks and even improve their school performance.
Several studies have shown the benefits of learning arithmetic with the abacus in children cognitive skills.
For example the study 'The Impact of Abacus Learning of Higher Arithmetic on Cognitive Abilities of children'(2005), carried out using a significant sample of the ALOHA Mental Arithmetic students, proved the programme’s positive impact on children brain functioning and cognitive development.
No, it is not. It is recommendable to practice at home often and regularly for practice makes perfect but it is not compulsory at all.
Definitively not. In ALOHA children learn to calculate with the abacus, what obviously helps them improve in mathematics but they also boost other “superpowers”: they learn how to have better concentration skills, they develop their mental agility, logical thinking, creativeness...
It is the ancient calculating device ever known. Thanks to it, children learn to calculate as if it was a beads game: addition, subtraction, multiplication, divisions, square roots, exponentiations, combined operations...
From the variety of abacus existing, ALOHA students use the Japanese abacus, also known as soroban. This type of abacus consists of an upper bead and four lower beads.
No. It is as if the father of a child speaks English and the mother French: the child will learn both languages. The same happens with ALOHA. Children are given more resources, with all the benefits that come with them.
You can time the home trainings, download practice sheets from the Parents' Area and, most of all, ask them how the training session was and what they have learnt.
As in ALOHA they learn really quickly, at the beginning it is easy to keep up with the abacus movements taught in the session but soon you will not understand much. There is no need to worry, it is normal. Children brain has a greater potential than the adults´ ones. Simply encourage them to carry on and enjoy watching their improvements.
At any rate, within the website Parents' Area (only available in Spanish) you will find documents to guide your children learning.
If you still have some doubt, contact us through the suggestion box.
In this section, it is possible to download activities to train during the holidays, practice sheets, guides to help your child at home...
ENTER PARENTS’ ZONE
