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Using Cuisenaire Rods with a 2.5yo who is possibly gifted? Any experience/ opinions?

I wouldn't recommend teaching a 2.5yo in any way, but if you think they might make a good toy, go ahead. All I did at that age was to respond to DS's conversation about numbers and patterns. One thing I remember him loving at about that age was a set of fridge magnets in various polygonal shapes and multiple glittery colours, fwiw.

We use a slightly more versatile toy--Math Cubes--as a substitute for Lego with DS2. He's managed to figure out number relationships by building things with the blocks. He also loves tesselation tiles for building and using in pretend play, and he's picked up how the shapes correspond to one another indirectly through his play.

Like ColinsMum, I'd say try it if you think your child will have fun exploring with it. I'm a big fan of making media available, sitting back, and seeing what my son does with it.

Watch out for choking hazards.

We had Cuisenaire rods when my eg ds was small - and he used them to build things out of

My personal philosophy at 2 is to follow your child's lead - have lots of things available for them to explore, take them lots of different places, spend lots of time just interacting with them - but don't over obsess about learning tools etc. If your child is going to be extraordinarily gifted at math, they most likely don't need a tool like the rods. Or they might enjoy it. Or they might enjoy it even if they aren't gifted at math. Whoever they are or whoever they eventually become, I would choose things like this at this stage based on what you'd like to do with your child and then be ok with however they decided to use (or not use) it Enjoy them - the early years pass by so quickly!

Best wishes,

polarbear

I think DD was around that age when she started asking for an abacus and SO and I got into a huge disagreement. Looking back, it was really silly of us to make such a big deal out of a $10 abacus that DD uses as a shaker 90% of the time. We do use it once in awhile to explain concepts in teachable moments and other than that abacus, we have no math manipulatives around the house except for lego and other building blocks.

We are thinking about giving her some mathy gifts this Christmas and I haven't finalized the shopping list but my selection criteria are that they have to have multiple and long-term purposes, durable, fun to play with, and pretty enough to sit on the shelf. So Cuisenaire Rods that come in a wooden storage tray would fit the bill.

my kids don't learn by being taught. They just "absorb" info from all the sources around them. If I tried to teach them something, their reaction would "nice try! ha ha ha!" ... As for Cuisenaire Rods, I'm pretty sure both boys would use them for building and that's about it. They somehow "understand" math without needing any visuals / manipulatives.

Videogames is a great teaching tool in this house. Vtech Vsmile system taught DS5.2 basic math operations when he was hardly 3 years old and Leapfrog Leappad Explorer / Leappad2 Explorer is a huge hit in any subject area. I wouldn't know how smart DS3.6 was if it wasn't for what I saw him doing on Leappad!

They are good playthings but do you or will you have a baby in the house because the pieces are small.

We had Cuisenaire rods because I thought they might be good for teaching (exposing, discussing if asked, but not outright instructing) relationships between numbers, kinda like the larger rods my DD's montessori preschool had, but it turns out my kids never really seemed to *not* understand those kinds of relationships and concepts. Like others have said, my kids liked building with them and making pictures out of them, so they had value like blocks or other creative toys.

You could also get pattern blocks http://www.edsco.com.au/products/product/B-015289?category=JRWJYBWJ