Originally Posted by melmichigan
MamaTo2,
Are Cuisinaire rods like the mathlinks rods I use from Learning Resources? Ten rows of ten that can all be interlocked on all sides? We do a lot with manipulatives in the younger years. HTH

Cuisenaire rods may be the same. They come in a set of various sizes/colors, each representing a different number. The base unit is a square centimeter, and then they increase in size up to 10cm. So, if I put two 1's together, I can see that it doubles in size to 2, two 2s make 4, etc... One thing that was very helpful was having the rod track , which is marked with cm units and makes seeing the relationships easy.

I had initially thought they would be good just for illustrating the 4 operations, but we used them for other concepts.

Showing place value: Whenever the one's column got over nine cubes, we exchanged it for a solid ten rod and put it in the ten's column.

Showing balanced equations using a balance scale: I put a 3 and 2 rod on one side, and a 5 rod on the other. They were perfectly balanced. Anything I did to one side would make the scale tilt until I did the same on the other.

Showing volume of geometric solids: I made cubes of various sizes from graph paper and filled the cubes with the 1cm cuisenaire cubes to show volume, as opposed to area.