I've been sooo excited to be exploring math with rods. I'm sure I said it before but I really didn't understand much math through undergrad and grad school! I'm so grateful to be developing a strong core for myself (at 38!) and to be helping my kids at the same time. Take a look at these pictures and see how some simple rods illuminate important math principles.The picture to the left is a wall exploring the number 20 (5 pink rods). We build as many trains with eh same length as we can and then look at what we can learn from the trains. So the yellow train tells us that 5 yellow rods gives us the same as 4 pink rods. We also learn that 2 dark greens and 4 reds give us 20. So if we convert to numbers, we know that 4 and 4 and 4 and 4 and 4 is 20, which is the same as saying that 5 groups of 4 is 20. I love sliding into multiplication without rote learning! Yippeee!
The picture of the church shows that kids can be pretty creative with the rods, and at the same time, be internalizing principles of symmetry, etc.
