In the Bag

     There is a useful game described in Patricia Davidson's Idea Book for Cuisenaire Rods at the Primary Level. A child, with his hands behind his back, is given a rod and asked to guess the color. This gives the little person a very tactile sense of the relative sizes of the rods. We found that identifying the very large and very small rods was not so difficult, but distinguishing dark green from black was much harder. The game was fun and helpful in developing real familiarity with the rods.
     As a variation on this theme, we made a game of placing a bunch of rods of all sizes in an opaque cloth bag. The first version of our game required the player to grab a rod (unseen) and predict the color before she removed it from the bag. When this became too 'easy', the mission became finding a specific color rod in the bag and pulling it out. Another variation had the player building a staircase and then a reverse staircase-- in other words, rods of ten different sizes had to be pulled out of the bag in order from smallest to largest then from largest to smallest. This is easier if there are only ten rods in the bag (ok as a beginning version) but harder when there are three or four or five of each color in the bag.

     These sort of tactile games are more important for some children than for others, but I have found them useful all around. Children with learning disabilities or deprivations of various sorts seem to especially benefit from the exercise. I once worked with children so culturally deprived they couldn't, at ages five and seven, recognize themselves in a photograph or understand two dimensional representations so as to make sense of a story book. They were enormously helped by a French game called Tactilo which I can't seem to find anywhere now. It was by Fernand Nathan and consisted of beautiful little wooden shapes-- cube, sphere, egg, cone, mallet, bowl, mushroom,etc and cards with matching two dimensional pictures. The object was to reach into a little silk bag and pull out objects to match the flat pictures. It's easy to take skills for granted that little ones need to learn in one way or another in order to move forward in math. And it's also why it's important to allow for plenty of block play, math games, spatial relationship and pattern learning to take place before "jumping the gun" into formal numerical instruction.
     When I was, recently, discussing the 'bag' game for Cuisenaire rods with my daughter, she made the suggestion that the game could be adapted to Pattern Blocks as well for the purpose of learning the shapes by feel. Sounds like a great idea to me.

What Fits?

     This is a Cuisenaire Rods game that lets your child begin to 'see' or 'feel' or 'sense' math relationships. The object is to start with a given rod, say the orange one, and 'fit' other rods to it.  Two yellows fit. A dark green and a purple fit, too. Ten white rods fit. And so on.

     No numbers need to be assigned, but they will come eventually. An orange rod is ten units long and the rods that 'fit' are the numbers that add up to ten. I think it's important to just go with colors and size and feel for quite a long time and let the game be open-ended. When arithmetic finally does come up it will seem perfectly reasonable that 5 + 5 = 10 because "of course" yellow and yellow fit orange. I find it helps some children to verbalize the relationships just that way: "Look, Mom-- brown and red make orange"  or "Green and red fit yellow."

     Cuisenaire sells a little frame with their basic sets that make 'fitting' the rods easier for little people. This frame is especially useful if the game is amplified to include more than two pieces in a 'fit' and if the 'fits' are stacked up into a pattern or design. These 'rugs' are a lot of fun to create. Some pictures of individual fits as well as rugs follow.

     As children get older and more experienced, the game can be amplified to include 'fits' to double length rods. For instance, the question could be asked, 'What fits two brown rods?' Fits can also be more challenging if the player is limited to a single color answer. For orange this would require two yellow rods or five red rods. For 'odd' size rods, like yellow, there is no single color answer. That problem is solved if a single white rod is permitted when needed. In that case, yellow could be fitted with two red rods and a white.

Hungry Joe

     I invented Hungry Joe years ago as a way to work with very young kids on math comparison ideas. It simultaneously introduces the math symbols to go with the concepts.

     All you need are three index cards with a hand-drawn face on each:

     These are used to play a game. Hungry Joe has a crazy appetite. He always tries to eat the larger object or quantity and his ‘mouth’ opens accordingly. When two objects or quantities are equal Hungry Joe is at a total loss and his mouth just drops open into an equal sign. So if I place a large apple and a small one on the table, the object of the game is to place the correct Hungry Joe face between the apples. A large apple on the child’s left and a small on the right requires the Joe card in which the ‘open’ end of his mouth is facing left.
     The same game can be played with counters, cuisenaire rods, toys of various sorts, glasses of water or juice, M&M’s, building blocks, real world objects– big chair vs little chair or two chairs vs five chairs– and so on. Some examples (exploring both size and number) follow:

Hungry Joe will choose the two-chair option for his meal.





Oops! Hungry Joe can't decide because both options are the same.

Hungry Joe will definitely go for the two cans.







Four forks beat three.

 

The big vehicle makes a better meal than the smaller.   

Those fishies are the same size!
 

 A big turtle beats a little one. 



     More sophisticated objects/ideas can also be introduced when appropriate, for instance a dollar bill on one side, three quarters on the other and eventually regular numerals, fractions, or decimals can be used.
     Remember this should be fun or it won’t really be helpful. Your little person may want to draw his/her own Hungry Joe faces or pose problems for you to solve. Taking turns works well.
     Eventually a revised ‘Hungry Joe’ in which only the mouth on the face remains can be used as a transition to using the ‘mouth’ images as stand-alone symbols. Here are a couple of examples:

Have fun– make up your own variations.