Cuisenaire Rods

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did anyone use these at school? they are coloured wooden blocks to visualise numbers. i loved using them at school and thinking back the concept really worked for me.

i still have a full set - missing one little white 1 block!!! ahhh the smell of them!

Yes, love them. You can buy them online - we have a glorious box (of wooden ones, the ones with the heady smell (NotAnOtter) - don't get fobbed off with the new-fangled plastic ones) which fit so exquisitely into little sections and is overall a museum-piece of neatness.

Ds and dd make "cakes" out of them, a lot.

But also seem to have picked up some very solid number basics.

going to have a look on t'net for them now - thanks for inspiring me ( too precious with my own set !)

here

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I used these when growing up in Australia and we are using a set with DD - excellent for learning those magic number bonds! Teacher (who is also Australian) has given approval.(!)

I've got some! A little bit nibbled by mice in my parents' attic. I don't remember using them for maths learning as such but the white ones were great as sugar lumps with my little tea set...

Now I don't remember them from school at all. But they are making a big comeback with the National Numeracy srategy. I used them when I was teaching Maths. I also used them in science for doing surface area:volume ratio.

We have cheap plastic ones from www.yellowmoon.com, I think it was.

They are a bit small and not that great, the dds use them to make fences etc rather than to improve their numeracy.

Our school said they prefer not to use them but favour some system of blocks where odd and even numbers are emphasised, don't know how to describe it without drawing it. e.g. rectangles of 2x3 to make 6, and a 3 + a 4 stuck together to make 7.

am probably not making much sense here but school implied that cuisinaire rods are less good than this new thing.

Ahhhh!!!! I love that they're still the same colours for the numbers!!

Don't care whether they are educationally valid or not (as I don't have children of the right age ), just nostalgiatastic!

I remember we used to have slabs of the single units as well to illustrate 100 and 1000.

bink, where did you buy your wooden ones online?

Here's one lot, the box looks like the one we have but I think the contents are ... plastic

You can also get them (and definitely wood, but not in that nice Bauhausy box) at my very beloved outfit Tarquin (scroll down the page)

NotAnOtter- I may have that spare little white block somewhere- if I can find it would you like it? A mate rescued a couple of boxes of the originals from- yes, a school skip!- She gave me a box and some spare bits'n'pieces. Let me know, on here's fine.

thanks a mil, bink

miljee that would be so kind!

Ours at school in the 70s were plastic. Is that another sign of having attended the Wrong Sort of School?

I have a box of the wooden ones that belonged to me and my siblings when we were little. DD2 in particular likes to make elaborate patterns with them and get me to take photos of them with her leaning over looking pleased!

BTW I got new wooden ones (not from tarquin a year ago) and the pieces are not well cut so 10 white doesn't equal an orange one. Must have been a faulty batch but wasn't sure that I wanted to teach DD that 9 1/2 w = 1 orange! Will try the tarquin ones. I remember using them very well...