differerence btw base 10 set and cuisenare rods?

[trisharog]

Every pic I find of these two manipulatives is small so i cant figure out the difference btw the two. I have a tube of linking cubes ( 150 cubes in 10 colors)

They are 2 cm square and look similar to legos. Does that take the place of one of these types of manipulatives ore do you use these linking cubes for something else?

 

Thanks

Trisha

[Pata]

c-rods have different rod sizes & colors for each number 1-10

 

base 10 have 1 unit blocks, 10 unit sticks, 100 unit flats and a 1000 unit cube

 

You could use the linking cubes in place of the c-rods, but I would get the base ten blocks as it's hard to replicate the 100's flats and the 1000 cube. Hope that helps!

[FO4UR]

The C-rods assign a color to a value...1 is white, 2 is red, 3 is light green, etc. This can't really be reproduced by the linking cubes imHo, b/c part of the benefit of C-rods is red *always* being 2, white *always* being 1...or in those proportions if we are talking about fractions... This makes learning the 4 operations intuitive.

 

I think the benefit of the base ten blocks is that they come in ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands. They are definitely great for place value. We trade out 10 ones for a ten and see why we regroup multi-digit numbers...

 

The linking cubes are rarely used in my house...my set just doesn't link easily so they are occasionally seen as projectile missiles in playmobile adventures, but other than that...

 

Another thought is C rods and base ten blocks are both based in 1cm cubes...so we can use them interchangeably.

[alecat]

Another thought is C rods and base ten blocks are both based in 1cm cubes...so we can use them interchangeably.

 

We actually do use both, having found them through ebay.

It helped us especially recently when we were setting DD up to do mental arithmetic to add to 100, or subtract from 100. (We've just started Singapore Maths 2B).

[Spock]

 

Another thought is C rods and base ten blocks are both based in 1cm cubes...so we can use them interchangeably.

 

We use Cuisenaire rods, with the addition of a package of hundreds flats (10 in a pack) that we bought separately. We used to have a package of thousands cubes (4 in a pack), but those were lost/broken through the years, and I didn't think we used them enough to replace them.

 

Since the Cuisenaire rods and base 10 blocks are the same size, it is easy to see that 10 of the orange rods = 1 of the hundreds flats. I have also been known to use index cards for 100's to demonstrate long division to a child who already understands the relationship between 10's and 100's.

 

For some reason 2 of the 3 who have learned long division so far have needed me to actually build the problem with blocks and show exactly what happens in each step, while simultaneously writing it on a dry erase board. Going over this repeatedly, while passing the responsibility for building/writing over to the child has worked very well as a supplement to Singapore 3. (Just the other day I read on this forum that Singapore's explanations for long division weren't good, and I wondered why, since 3 of my children had easily learned with that plus a little Miquon yellow. Then, I suddenly realized that the teaching with blocks and dry erase board was not actually part of the Singapore program.):lol: