You know what helps kids (and adults) learn math? The abacus/soroban. Yes, automaticity with math facts/basic math is important but what's really important is

You know what helps kids (and adults) learn math? The abacus/soroban. Yes, automaticity with math facts/basic math is important but what's really important is being able to represent the base-10 system mentally. The abacus is an amazing tool that's been successful in creating math savants - here's the world champion adding 10 four-digit numbers in 1.7 seconds using mental math https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2012/oct/29/mathematics https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numb... Students are actually taught how to think of numbers in groups of tens, fives, ones in Common Core math -- however, most are not given the abacus as a tool/manipulative.