Our experience with early math has been a good one, particularly due to the fact we were introduced to this fun, visual way at the very beginning. We all do our math at the same time, including the baby. With the rods spread out all over the table, he built trains and forts and was kept very busy while the other two worked in the books. The early playing is encouraged because that way the children are already familiarizing themselves with the colors, shapes, equalities and inequalities of the rods. There are many systems that match the Cuisenaire rods, but our favorite is Miquon. There are 6 workbooks that cover approximately grades 1 - 3. You will need a set of rods, the minimum required would be the Introductory Set, but we recommend the Group Set. There's enough in there to build loads of good stuff, and if you 're teaching more than one child at a time, it 's necessary. The workbooks are not marked by grade levels, only colors, and are listed below in sequential order: Orange Red Blue Green Yellow Purple This book, Miquon Math Labsheet Annotations, is the most important book of all. It includes many of the answers and variations as well as pictures of the Miquon Workbooks work pages. It covers all six workbooks! After completing all six, your child should easily be ready for 4th grade math. When our oldest completed Miquon, Saxon 54 was a very appropriate next step.
