Math Fun with Cuisenaire Rods
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Boring Math becomes Fun Math with Cuisenaire Rods!
See the math fun... Cuisenaire Rods come in a rainbow of colors!
Close your eyes and feel the math... Wooden Cuisenaire Rods feel delightful when you pick them up.
Hear the math...run your hands through a pile of Cuisenaire Rods and listen to the math tinkle. Drop the rods one at a time and listen to them play music. Did you know that you can actually play music with Cuisenaire Rods? We'll learn more about that later.
Smell the newness of your math blocks and imagine tasting, oh, well, did you really think we would taste the blocks? Taste and smell will certainly be a part of our math fun as you will see...
Come open the box, take out your Cuisenaire Rods and let the fun math exploration begin...
Photo Credit: Cuisenaire Rods by Rev Dan Catt
on Flickr, Creative Commons
Wooden Cuisenaire Rods
Math is Fun with Cuisenaire Rods
Photo Credit: Cuisenaire Rods by Rev Dan Catt
on Flickr, Creative Commons
Start with a bucket of wooden Cuisenaire Rods. This bucket of math blocks comes with 50 white, 25 red, 16 light green, 12 purple, 10 yellow, eight dark green, seven black, eight brown, nine blue, and 10 orange rods for a total of 155 wooden blocks. Each block measure one centimeter square on the end. The lengths of the rods increase by one centimeter with each color in the above order until you get to the ten centimeter long orange rod.
But what is it about these blocks that makes math fun?
Cuisenaire Rods turn meaningless numbers into something that children can see and feel. The more senses that a child uses, the more integrated the concepts will be. With understanding, math becomes fun. Throughout this article you will find fun math games to play with your children. The more they play with math, the deeper their understanding of the math concepts will be and the more fun they will have with math.
Cuisenaire Rods Small Group Wood
Amazon Price: $15.82 (as of 06/02/2012)
Fun Math poll
Do you agree that math is fun?
Photo Credit: Cuisenaire Rods by smithi1
on Flickr, Creative Commons
The more they play with math, the deeper their understanding of the math concepts will be and the more fun they will have with math
Building Skyscrapers is Fun Math!
Jumbo Cuisenaire Rods make Mathematical Skyscrapers
Photo Credit: Name Your Link
Available on Amazon
When I was teaching a K-1 class in Florida, one of the parents gave me a set of Math-U-See blocks which came with a few games to play. My class's favorite game was called Skyscrapers.
You decide on a number, such as 5 in order to determine the height of each story. Then building up on each corner, make floors that are five units high. At first you might use just yellow blocks which are already 5 units high. When you run our of yellows you soon discover that a purple (4) combined with a white (1) is the same height as a yellow or that a red (2) combined with a light green (3) is the same height as a yellow (5).
An ideal way to form each floor is by using a hundreds square but if you don't have any, we discovered that we could use square pieces of cardboard instead. Later on, once we had purchased the hundreds squares, the children began to count the floors by 100's.
Can you see how building these skyscrapers naturally leads to the discovery of the addition and subtraction facts for the number 5 fact family? 5+0=5, 4+1=5, 3+2=5, 5-0=5, 4-1=5, and 3-2=5.
Math-U-See - Complete K-12 Math Curriculum
Math-U-See combines colorful math blocks or rods with video instruction, textbooks and worksheets to teach math from pre-K though high school math. It can be used in both classrooms or in homeschool situations.1 point
Math U See Review
The children loved working with the Math U See games. They were a great supplement to all the other activities we use. Their favorite game was Skyscrapers ...0 points
Big Cuisenaire Rods for making Skyscrapers
Jumbo Cuisenaire Rods
Jumbo Cuisenaire Rods Class Set
Amazon Price: (as of 06/02/2012)
Product Description
Engage your younger students with easy-to-handle large wooden Cuisenaire Rods that range in size from a 2-cm cube to a 2 cm x 2 cm x 20 cm rod. Includes 154 Cuisenaire Rods. The name Cuisenaire and the color sequence of the Rods are registered trademarks of ETA/Cuisenaire .
Chip Trading with Cuisenaire Rods!
Fun Math Game for learning Regrouping!
Photo Credit: Cuisenaire Rods by Rev Dan Catt
on Flickr, Creative Commons
Trade the Cuisenaire Rod Game is a fun math activity. Each player rolls two dice, adds the two numbers together and takes the correct number or combination of rods needed to represent that number. Each time you get to ten you must trade up. The first player to get ten orange rods is the winner.
Cuisenaire Rods: Space, Color, and Mathematics by Carolyn True
Dozens of activities for children to become famili more...1 point
Visualizing Multiplication!
Fun Math Multiplication Activities with Cuisenaire Rods
Photo Credit: Cuisenaire Rods Activity by conskeptical
on Flickr, Creative Commons
Cut centimeter graph paper and cut out 10X10 squares. Glue each square onto Name Your Link
and laminate
them. Each pair of students will need a card for each player, Cuisenaire Rods, two dice of two different colors, two fine tipped dry erase markers and paper for recording.The object of the game is to make filled in rectangles until no more space is available. This two player game encourages your children to use strategy skills when determining where to place their rectangles to avoid being blocked.
Photo Credit: Graph Paper for Cuisenaire Rods
Available on Amazon
RULES:
1. Take turns rolling the dice to determine which Cuisenaire Rods to take. One color die will give you the length and the other will tell how many rods to take.
2. Players arrange their rods into a rectangle, place it on their grid, and trace it. Write the multiplication sentence inside each rectangle.
3. The game is over when one player can't place a rectangle because there's no room on the grid. The winner is the one to have the most squares covered.
After your children have played this game several time, start a discussion about which strategies worked best for determining where to put the rectangles as well as ways to calculate their scores.
This game was adapted from Instructor, April 1994.
4 Great Math Games
This site is a collection of four educational math games, created by author Marilyn Burns. Students grapple with probabilities, from a beginning to a more complex level. This educational game has links to a variety of teacher resources and an online activities...1 point
“Math is Fun!”
Fun Math Activities using Cuisenaire Rods
Activities for teaching math using Cuisenaire Rods
Exploring Mathematics: Using Cuisenaire Rods- Grades K-8 by Learning Resources
From the basics of patterning to equivalent fracti more...1 point
Using the cuisenaire rods
A photo/text guide for teachers by Jessica Davidso more...1 point
Everything's Coming Up Fractions: with Cuisenaire Rods by John Bradford
Learn fractions with Cuisenaire Rods for 4-6 Grade more...1 point
Cuisenaire Rods Idea book
Mathematics activities for Cuisenaire rods at the more...1 point
Spatial Problem Solving with Cuisenaire Rods by Patricia S. Davidson, Robert E. Willcutt
One reviewer says that this book "contains we more...1 point
Have you discovered how much fun math can be?
Have you ever played with Cuisenaire Rods?
I don't believe math can be fun :(
Math is fun with Cuisenaire Rods :)
gravityx9 says:
I have always enjoyed math, so it came easy to me. Trying to pass that onto my kids was another story! Great ideas here for making math fun! *tweeted*
Frischy says:
As a child I hated math, but loved playing with blocks. Isn't it too bad that someone did not find a way to build on (excuse the pun) my natural mathematical inclination? At that time (mid-1960's) the move was away from all manipulatives, including counting on fingers, and math was done entirely by rote. There was no effort to form any kind of concept for why 2+2=4. There was no effort to each kids to think mathematically. It was all memorization & don't think about it. I hated it and did poorly. Something like these rods might have made all the difference. Perhaps now I would be nuclear physicist instead of a struggling writer. lol
Math Fun starts with Cuisenaire Rods!
Getting Started with Cuisinaire Rods!
Cuisenaire® Rods Small Group Set
Cuisenaire Rods Small Group Set - Everything you need to start teaching with Cuisenaire Rods-155 color-related rods in a handy self-sorting tray and a Learning with Cuisenaire Rods Activity Guide.1 point
Idea Book for Cuisenaire Rods at the Primary Level
This updated 120-page version of the original Cuisenaire® Rods Idea Book includes 86 Learning Experiences, 22 Worksheets and 5 Worksheet Masters that can be incorporated into daily lesson plans.1 point
Intermediate Idea Book for Cuisenaire Rods
Take learning with Cuisenaire® Rods to a higher level with this 120-page book that explores numbers and operations, measurement, algebra, geometry, data analysis and probability.1 point
Cuisenaire Alphabet Math
Math Fun with the Cuisenaire Alphabet
How can you have fun with math while creating animals, letters and more? Here are some delightful ways to combine language arts with fun math activities. Feel free to add your own suggestions. The more you and your children play with the Cuisenaire Rods the more math activities you will discover. Be sure to come back and share your suggestions. The more we share the more fun we will have! Let's have fun with Cuisenaire Rods...
Note: I suggest that you photocopy or take the Cuisenaire Alphabet Book apart and laminate
the pages. The pages will last longer and can be used by more than one child at a time. Math Fun with Letters
Gather your children and make the letter of your first name. Use the templates in the Cuisenaire Alphabet Book. Then lay out your Cuisenaire Rods in a line side by side to see whose letter is the longest.0 points
Measure Your Name
Now use Cuisenaire Rods to spell your name using the templates in the Cuisenaire Alphabet Book. Whose name is the longest? Whose name is the shortest?0 points
Cuisenaire Animal Game
Choose an animal from the Cuisenaire Alphabet Book and create it using the template. Now lay out all of the blocks lengthwise and compare the length of your animal with your friend's animal. Which animal is the longest? Which animal is the shortest?0 points
Cuisenaire Animal Squares
Choose an animal from the Cuisenaire Alphabet Book and create it using the template. Now try to arrange the rods into a perfect rectangle. What multiplication sentence represents your rectangle? Can you create a square from the Cuisenaire Rods needed to make your animal? You may exchange blocks if you need to. What is the square root of the square?0 points
Fun Math Journal
Journaling about Cuisenaire Math Activities
Photo Credit: Math Journal
on Flickr, Creative Commons
Marilyn Burns taught for over 30 years. One of my favorite activities that she suggested is to journal about the math you are learning. The above book of centimeter square graph paper pages is perfect for journaling about the fun math activities you are learning. Journaling encourages your children to think deeply about what they are learning in order to explain it in words.
Writing in Math Class: A Resource for Grades 2-8
Amazon Price: $17.00 (as of 06/02/2012)
In Writing in Math Class, Marilyn Burns explains how writing helps children to sort, clarify and define their thinking about mathematical concepts they are learning. Ms. Burns demonstrates various different types of writing related to math.
Blogging about Cuisenaire Rods and Math Fun!
Look who's having fun with math:
Here you will find links to some great sites about Cuisenaire Rods and how people discover that math was fun once they were introduced to these beautiful math manipulatives. Look for the homeschooling mom who remembered learning with Cuisenaire Rods when she was a child. Find dozens of games and activities to help your children learn math from pre-school through high school. Learn how to make change using Cuisenaire Rods or to measure distances with these fun math tools.
If you encounter another article that you believe should be in this list, be sure to add it. The more we share, the more fun math will be for our children.
Lark Song Knits talks about Cuisenaire Rods
This unhomeschooling mom has discovered how much her children love playing with Cuisenaire Rods. They are learning math too!1 point
Free Lesson Plans from ETA/Cuisenaire
Dozens of games and activities to use with Cuisenaire Rods.1 point
Cuisenaire Rods Go Pythagorean! | MathFour
Cuisenaire Rods for High School math students and art lovers as well.1 point
Adventures in Mama-Land: Math Lesson: Money with Cuisenaire Rods
Fun math lesson for teaching your children about money with Cuisenaire Rods.1 point
Measureing height and width with Cuisenaire Rods
After measuring the three objects, students were asked to explain which was the tallest.1 point
Source for Wooden Cuisenaire Rods
Where can I find Wooden Cuisenaire Rods?
Mentioning Math!
Commenting on Cuisenaire Rods!
Photo Credit: Cuisenaire Rods by Rev Dan Catt
on Flickr, Creative Commons
When you comment on this article be sure to mention whether or not you have ever used Cuisenaire Rods and if you have ever compared wooden Cuisenaire Rods with Plastic ones. After using Wooden Cuisenaire Rods did you suddenly feel that math was fun?
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Frischy
Dec 10, 2011 @ 11:26 am | delete
- I have not used these, but I think they would be both fun and useful in learning math.
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LindaJM Dec 10, 2011 @ 1:31 am | delete
- We used these when we were homeschooling.... lots of fun and educational too!
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WhitePineLane
Dec 9, 2011 @ 10:32 pm | delete
- Wow - as soon as I saw these I thought they looked familiar and they seemed to bring back a memory. Then I thought they're probably not that old, though. Then I scrolled further down and saw a vintage set on eBay, and sure enough - I would've been about 5 or six when that set came out! I'm sure I have played with them. And just looking at them and remembering, I believe they would certainly make math easier to understand. (OK, OK... and more fun too!) ;-)
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About the teacher who makes math fun...
Fun Math Teacher
Math became fun the day I first laid eyes on Cuisenaire Rods. I have been learning more and more ways to use these blocks ever since. From Cuisenaire Rods I went on to discover hundreds of other ways to make learning come alive for children. Discover unit studies about Frog Unit Study, lemmings, woodchucks and more.
Explore numbers by skip counting, carving pumpkins, or counting to a billion.
Come discover more ways to make learning fun for your children...
by Evelyn_Saenz
My passion is teaching and finding ways to teach children in fun, hands-on, creative ways. The unit studies I make on Squidoo reflect my view that learning... more »
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