Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Cuisenaire Rods

See, I used that to teach her subtraction... Lol.
"Oh! 6 chips? I guess you'll have to eat 3!" Etc.

Now at 3.5 she's obsessed with patterns. She needs to declare her dinner pattern before she starts - "OK, fish, carrot, rice, rice, juice. That's my pattern."

She loves math in both the abstract and concrete senses

We don't use the rods (though I have to admit they seem interesting), we just use everyday things and situations - I doubt it would hurt to use them though - never know what interesting conclusions or lessons they'd learn with just some minimal guidance

We used the rods. I think I purchased them for DD when she was about 3 years old. At 2.5 she started counting coins up through 50 out of the blue and completely untaught. I introduced the rods as a dining room table toy. She took right to them. She caught on to their names right away, and it was a great way to show her how to measure things and compare. If she did not remember that the orange rod was a ten rod, she could measure them with one rods, or she could compare the orange rod to two five rods, etc.

I was actually quite surprised how intuitive it was for her. It was not to me, but I got the hang of it. She just played with them, making trains, patterns, and calling the 3 rods preschoolers, the 4 rods pre-Kers, the 5 rods kindergartners, etc.

When she started to add above ten, the rods were just amazing. She immediately manipulated them in such a way that made it easier for her to "see". For example, she could measure that an 8+7 was the same length as a 10+5, and she could break it down further as an 8+2+5. I think the rods are great for exploring and internalizing--not rote memorization.

I never really taught with them. They just stayed on the dining room table until they got cycled out for something else. She would play with them, and I might yell over to figure out 8+7.

They were great for my not very visual DD. It really helped her see things in concrete ways when she was more inclined to just memorize facts. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions have been explored through these rods. It was just luck that I stumbled onto them. I am thoroughly happy that I did.

ellemenope, you just convinced me to buy the rods now, rather than later. DD still wants those beads; one of them is stuck behind the cup holder in the car and she notices it once in awhile and reminds me that I promised her to replace them. I found rods that are color coordinated with the beads. I think I'm getting more excited about these than I should be.

For DD, it was making numerical patterns with peas and carrots and making maze with spaghetti. I thought she was avoiding eating anything but mac'n cheese but maybe there was something more to it.

Haha! That was totally me with a balance and calibration weights for DS2's recent birthday. I like to think an excited parent motivates an engaged child.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't save it!

While touring preschools, I noticed my DS3 quickly gravitated to a container of Unifix cubes. I later purchased them along with a 1-10 stair, and it's amazing the number of ways he has used them - one time they were seeds that he planted, another time fruit salad, trains, etc. He also uses them to create patterns, and I recently observed him constructing math facts for 10 with the stair and happily talking to himself about "all the ways I can make 10". They are different from the Cuisenaire Rods you are considering, but you might find them of interest.

Yes, Unifix cubes got a lot more use at our house. They were used for building things, kinda like Legos, but also for making more salient concepts like arrays, area, circumference, fractions, word problems, patterns, etc. They were also used in pretend play, where they were sorted into different families or groups and "lived" in houses built by other unifix cubes. In my house they were used by all of my kids - two of whom are very mathy and one of whom definitely is not.