Connecting Cuisenaire® Rods are a collection of rectangular rods of 10 lengths and 10 colors, each color corresponding to a different length. The smallest rod is 1 cm long the longest rod is 10 cm. Rods connect at their ends. Each rod has lines on one side that divide the rod into sections. By counting the sections, children see how many white rods make up each rod.
The set contains 155 rods:
- 10 orange
- 9 blue
- 8 brown
- 7 black
- 8 dark green
- 10 yellow
- 12 purple
- 16 light green
- 25 red
- 50 white
One set is sufficient for three to four students.
Connecting Cuisenaire® Rods are appropriate for grades K through 8.
They help students explore:
- whole numbers
- addition and subtraction
- multiplication and division
- fractions and ratio
- three-dimensional geometry
- symmetry
- measurement
- patterns and functions
Connecting Cuisenaire® Rods provide a continuous number model, rather than a fixed model. They allow you to assign a value to one rod, and then to determine the values of the remaining 9 rods by using the relationships between the rods. For example, when the white rod has the value of 1, the orange rod, which is 10 times as long, has a value of 10 if the white rod is 2, the orange rod is 20 if the orange rod is 1, the white rod is 1⁄10.
