As a Primary School Teacher I value toys that are educational and offer a large range of hands-on learning opportunities that promote critical thinking, problem solving and creativity, and most importantly will be fun! Cuisenaire Learning Rods are a quality educational toy that fulfils these important qualities.
What are Cuisenaire Learning Rods?
They are small wooden blocks of different lengths and each length is represented by a different colour, such as orange is 10cm long, and white is 1cm long. Originally Cuisenaire Rods were used for teaching Mathematics such as fractions and arithmetic. Although they are still an important resource for teaching an understanding of these skills, they can be used for many other learning benefits such as language, imagination and creativity, construction, spatial awareness, fine motor development and eye – hand coordination.
We have had a play with the Cuisenaire Rods!
I love a toy that require kids to think, problem solve and sets them a challenge. The Cuisenaire Learning Rods comes with 6 guide boards with pictures that require children to fill in the boxes with the appropriate colour and size rod. These activity boards promote eye and hand coordination through a trial and error process much like solving a puzzle. It requires problem solving and exploring strategies to find a solution. You can also make other pictures without the activity boards or form the letters in your name with the learning rods.
Cuisenaire Learning Rods are great for exercising fine motor skills and encouraging creativity. The learning rods are fabulous for building and constructing, Miss 5 and 4 had a lot of fun balancing and stacking the rods to create buildings and objects.
The Cuisenaire Learning Rods are great for hands-on learning about early concepts of fractions, measurement and patterns. Miss 5 explored how many 1cm white rods it takes to make up a 10cm orange one, 9cm blue one and so on. Understanding that there was a pattern forming helped Miss 5 predict the next measurement of a rod. Miss 4 on the other hand explored and made patterns with colour and length of the rods.
The Cuisenaire Learning Rods encourage and allows the freedom for creativity. It is not a toy that is fixed into only doing one thing; it is open to exploring the imagination. Here is Miss 5 making a clock using the different size rods.
The Cuisenaire Learning Rods from Qtoys include 222 unit rods in 10 sizes and colours. The set is made out of plantation timber using non-toxic materials and comes with a storage box with 6 activity boards.
To purchase or find out more about the Cuisenaire Learning Rods click here to see stockists.
This set of Cuisenaire Learning Rods from the review has been donated to one of our local Early Learning Centres. I hope it brings lots of fun and learning!
I remember using these at school when I was a child! I might look into buying a set of these – I know my son would love them.