Cuisenaire Rods have all sorts of mathematical applications, but letter-oriented Emma thinks they are perfect for forming words! I love that “FUN” is the first word she formed with our set! This is a fun way to practice spelling words, too!
If you’re wondering about the tooth marks, don’t worry – my kids don’t bite them. These are from my own childhood, and one (or more) of the many cats and dogs that my family has loved over the years got into them =)
Do you play with Cuisenaire rods? Or do you have a fun way of playing with letters? Please link these or any other self-motivated learning posts up, because I would love to see them!
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
We have a very old set of Cuisenaire Rods from my mother in law, and I would love to have a handful of activities to do with them. How did you play that game? Did the shapes only use 90 degree bends? Were they strictly convex? Sounds fun.
The shapes had to be capable of being filled in entirely by Cuisenaire rods – so 90 degree bends and single cube incremental differences in angles. I should really write a post about it. Maybe this week…
Those are neat rods. I like your daughter’s out of the box thinking! I’ve never seen them before, but now I want some!
I’ve never heard of these but my son loves to use popsicle sticks to make letters. I love that your kids play with stuff you used to play with. My parents didn’t keep any of my toys and now that I have a child, I wish they had.
How wonderful that your children are enjoying some of the very same things you played with in your childhood.
We don’t have these rods, but we do use paddle pop sticks to make letters, words and pictures.
How neat that these come from your own childhood. We don’t have the rods, but daughter sometimes makes letters out of paper or sticks.
How FUN! :)
I’m pretty sure I used to chew on those. :-)
Really? Maybe it wasn’t a dog or cat after all!
I love these…we use our linking logs to do the same thing…and the kids love it! =)
Yea! I love it that favourite toys from your childhood are also favourites with your children!
I love that too!
We don’t use Cuissenaire Rods, but we’ve used the Math U See blocks for all sorts of fun stuff.
I’ve heard really good things about Math U See blocks.
C likes to make letters out of sticks! We have never used these rods, but I have seen them all over blogland.
The rods are a lot of fun! My mom used to play a game with us when we were slightly older where we had to use a certain number of rods to build a shape that’s perimeter took up a particular number of units. Very challenging, sometimes!