First encounter with Cuisenaire

We're looking after V who's six years old tonight. I'd made little maths books with him before, asking him what he'd like to put inside, and making a few suggestions too.

This weekend I brought plenty of Cuisenaire rods home and put them on the table loose in a tray.

"What are these?"

"I use them for teaching maths at school."

"What do you do with them?"

"You can do anything... but you have to sit down."

He laughed and sat down, and then first of all tried balancing the rods on their ends. Then he picked up a white rod and said, "This is a one." Just like that.

Then he grabbed a blue rod and asked what that was. I asked him to have a guess. He thought maybe twelve.

He said the red one was a two, and then lined some whites and a red up on top of the blue. "It's a nine," he said.

I was really amazed at the speed this was going at, with very little input from me, except to say that I didn't like the plastic ones as much as the wooden ones.

And then he made the staircase, starting at ten, and searching for the colours he needed:

When he'd done that he decided it was time to build up again:

Then he begin to fill in the space:

"It's a table!" he said, and added legs:

And that brought us to dinner time. I'm pretty impressed by all this. How much V did in that one short session of play!