Cuisenaire Rod Questions- what are yours like?

[RealLifeMama]

I finally got all the homeschool stuff I ordered! It was delivered today. :D
I looked at the Cuisenaire Rods I that I ordered and they do not look at all like the ones I used when I was teaching. Mine had graduations on them, so you could count to see if it was a 10 or a 1 or whatever. These are just rectangular solids, with smooth sides. Granted, those were plastic and these are wooden. If you have plastic ones, do yours have graduations on them and can you stack them?
Which do you think would be better for her age?
We can't call them "2's" and "10's" really, if there are no graduations, can we?

Anyway, what do you have and if you have a kindergartener, how do you use them?

[Mama Calidad]

The ones we have don't have graduations. I haven't figured out how to use them at all...and DS doesn't seem interested in using them as tiny blocks, so ours are busy gathering dust.

[hsgbdmama]

Ours don't have the graduations, either, and I've been teaching ds1 the number one that they are (i.e., the red ones are "2s"), which has been working well for us. :shrug

[Cindy]

My Cuisenaire rods are not graduated wither, but my base ten blocks are.

I also taught dd that the white cubes were 1's and the red were 2's etc., I think we may have had some fractions exercises where we would say if (the orange rod) is 1 than what is the yellow rod, etc., She had no trouble catching on to this. Are you looking at the Miquon materials? There is a very informatie yahoo group for Miquon users.

[Iarwain]

We have a base ten set which is graduated. I opted not to get Cuisenaire rods when we were first looking at manipulatives to purchase because of color-blindness issues. It's kind of a funny thing to have to consider when looking at educational materials, but it can be a big source of frustration for kids that are affected. We have not missed them one bit, but then we don't do much in the way of traditional curriculum so it's not part of the "plan".

[This Busy Mom]

I had the "normal" (no graduations) set for years. It gathered dust and I finally gave up and sold them.

I found a linking set that has the units marked on one side and bought a rod track, too, at Rainbow Resource. We use these much more...

http://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?sid=1158635544-164431&id=024116

http://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?sid=1158635544-164431&id=014565

[ArmsOfLove]

Cuisenaire rods are solid blocks, the manipulatives from Math U See are graded and can be staced :grin


We can't call them "2's" and "10's" really, if there are no graduations, can we? Why not??? We do :grin

[Hermana Linda]

TBH, I did not find much of a use for my Cuisenaire Rods until Algebra. There was an excercise in the back of the Algebra book which used unit tiles to expain the Distribution Theory. It was very helpful. I used that to help both boys at different ages. So, if you don't end up using them before then, you might just need them for Algebra.

[TestifyToLove]

We have both types of manipulatives.

Best use for Cuisenaire Rods are the kindergarten workbooks I got through Timberdoodle. They use them to make shapes, animals and alphabets with the rods. Its good 3 dimensional practice and they love it.