counting by twos with cuisenaire rods....

the path to the mind runs through the body....

Cuisenaire Rod Pyramids. Photo by Ian Smith.

The other day, I challenged my Grade Ones to build pyramid structures out of Cuisenaire rods. This is not an original idea — it is what the blocks themselves suggest, coming as they do in ten graduated sizes. Nor is it usually a staggeringly difficult task for most six-year-olds.

But the class I have this year is different.

Out of 18 students, I had four kids who were very nearly overwhelmed by this challenge. Each of them took more than an hour to successfully complete a pyramid. One of them couldn’t even put the rods in order from smallest to largest on a two-dimensional plane.

I was really surprised. I watched each of these kids, trying to figure out what was causing them difficulty. Sometimes their problems were conceptual — they couldn’t understand how to create a three-dimensional object with graduated sizes of what are essentially miniature planks. But all four of them had trouble physically manipulating and balancing the pieces, and/or figuring out how each layer had to be configured in order to rest on the previous one without falling into the centre of the structure.

While talking to these kids, I asked them if they had blocks of any kind at home. In all four cases, the answer was no.

Later, it occurred to me that all four of these children have behaviour problems at school. All four have difficulty attending to instructions. All four have trouble following through and completing tasks. All four struggle academically.

These are the same kids who, when given paint, paint their hands and faces, and create puddles of paint on their desks so they can smear it all around. These are the kids who have to roll the markers in the bin around in their hands for three minutes before choosing one. These are the kids who sift though whole bins of Lego blocks not really looking for anything in particular, just enjoying the rattle-bang of it all. These are the kids who can’t sit still for 35 seconds no matter how hard they try; who are perpetual motion machines, and often the motion is spinning.

And so I’m wondering….

Are we raising the first sensory deprived generation?

The technology we are able to give them is amazing; but screens are no substitute for actual sensation. Minecraft doesn’t replace Lego, any more than watching a game of soccer replaces PhysEd. Any more than looking at a postcard of a beach replaces the feeling of sand between your toes, the pull of the waves, the sting of the wind, the taste of the salt water, the abrasiveness of the rock, the sliminess of the seaweed, and the stench of low tide.

It seems like we are trying to bypass all the messiness and inefficiency and bother of lived experience to get straight to the minds of our kids. But for little people (and probably the rest of us too), the path to the mind runs through the body.

Maybe if our kids lived in richer sensory worlds, they wouldn’t find school SOOOO difficult.

(And get these kids some blocks, for Pete’s sake!)

zen and the art of cuisenaire rods....

Cuisenaire rods have a history that goes back at least to my childhood. I remember having one set — one of each colour of rod — to keep in a blue cardboard box in my desk for the year.

Now I use them to teach number concepts and measurement, and even use them as building materials to create small structures.

As a building material, cuisenaire rods are tricky. They are small, and smooth, and they don’t lock together like Legos or Lincoln Logs. They succumb to gravity very easily. As a result, they require a certain amount of precision and care — a discipline that comes built-in at no extra charge. And I think I like that.

They require sustained focus. They teach balance. They teach stillness.

Just call this post: zen and the art of cuisenaire rods.

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After the initial introduction of the rods, and letting the kids play with them a while, I walk the kids through comparing sizes, and putting them in order from shortest to longest and vice versa. This is a measurement goal in the Grade One curriculum. But then I also get them to do this in three dimensions, from four sides at once: I get them to build a pyramid.

This is not an original idea or an unexpected one. Because of the staggered sizes of the rods, this is the most natural thing to build with them. And most of the six-year-olds I’ve known could build a successful pyramid fairly easily.

So then I show the kids photos of the Eiffel Tower, and ask them to build that shape — essentially, a pyramid with a tall tower on it. The addition of the tower forces the kids to create a structure that is pretty centred over the base of the pyramid, or it will easily fall.

Cuisenaire rod Eiffel Tower -- with two views from directly above.

The next challenge is to build the pyramid upside down. (Usually I omit the smallest rod — the white one — from this challenge, but some kids can manage that too.) Building the pyramid upside down requires all of the levels to be still more concentric, or the whole structure will topple.

And finally, I ask them to build an hour-glass shape — a pyramid surmounted by an upside-down pyramid. That really tests the concentricity and balance of their structures!

Built into all of these shapes is the idea of a centre around which every level and aspect must be organized. It’s an organic concept of building — ordered like the annual rings inside a tree; like the layers of an onion, like the petals on a rose, like the nacre that forms a pearl.

A building process that is almost analogous to growth.

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(There’s that Zen notion again.)




Note: Here are more structures to challenge your kids to build.
 

The square trays used with the rods in this picture came with a Numicon set.
But I have been known to go into my local picture framer
 and ask her to cut me 4"x4" squares from her scraps of mat board.
Those will work too. See below.

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