Mathematics for preschoolers on Cuisenaire sticks. Where to start getting acquainted with chopsticks?

What is the power of ordinary counting sticks?

Many of you, dear parents, forget about the simplest and cheapest educational toys, which, if desired, can be made from waste material. The most primitive devices can provide tangible benefits to a child if they are included in the child’s home development program. Do you think sticks are only needed for counting? This is fundamentally wrong; their goals are much larger:

• Development of finger motor skills - even just by touching multi-colored sticks, children train their brains better than wooden sticks. I have already written a lot about motor skills, if you are interested, find articles on the site. From the simplest operation: taking it out of the case and putting it back, to complex patterns of counting material - all these tasks play a huge role in training the brain through the fingers.
• During classes with this simple device, spatial orientation is formed, children learn the concepts of right-left, front-behind, top-bottom.
• A variety of tasks with counting sticks require attention, visual-effective thinking, and active thinking.
• By completing tasks with the help of colored helpers, the child learns color.
• By making drawings, a preschooler activates creativity, design thinking, and imagination.
• And, finally, their direct purpose is teaching elementary mathematics. Here the field of action is wide: counting, geometric figures, comparison of quantities, simple arithmetic.
• Sticks are also used as an auxiliary tool for development using various methods, for example, Dienesh's logical blocks.

What are the best sticks to choose? For example, I found some good things in UchMag:

• Counting sticks and numbers, 72 elements – wooden set in a box;
• Pleasant to the touch, bright counting sticks in a case – 50 pcs.
• It’s very nice to have Cuisenaire sticks at home - a universal author’s material, the set includes elements of different colors and different lengths. Later I will tell you how to play and teach children with their help.

How to start using counting sticks for fun?

There are two stages of working with this simple material - the initial stage, when bright, smooth things are used as a playing tool. And the second stage is mathematical, a higher level, which involves mastering the basics of mathematics with the help of colored assistants.

In kindergarten, we begin working with a counting instrument by getting to know it: children look at the sticks, learn to determine their color, lay them out on the table, and put them in a box. It would be nice to make a hole in the lid of the box so that the child pushes each little thing into the hole - this is a great exercise for fingers. Then we put as many sticks as possible into each handle, then into the other, and aerobatics - with both handles.

Now that we've played enough, let's start geometric design. Laying out, including Cuisenaire's counting material, is the most enjoyable way for preschoolers to learn elementary geometry:

• Laying out geometric shapes according to the adult model: path, ladder, fence, squares, rectangles. Then we complicate it: house, train, car, butterfly, garage, etc. It’s even more interesting to play with Cuisenaire’s material; the sticks are large and you can use them to build three-dimensional figures.
• Laying out according to the picture: there is an image of a mushroom, flower, sun, and the child must guess how to lay it out from sticks.

And in combination with Dienesh's logic blocks, a child can be able to lay out anything, since these blocks are geometric shapes of different colors: circle, square, rectangle, triangle in two sizes and two types of thicknesses, ideal for preschool children who are becoming familiar with geometry.

By the way, if you are interested in the methodological material of Dienesh and Cuisenaire, I suggest the following literature:

• “Demonstration material for Cuisenaire counting sticks and Dienesh logic blocks” - here recommendations are given on how to work with these techniques, as well as sample lesson notes;
• “Logical-mathematical development of preschoolers: games with Dienesh’s logic blocks and Cuisenaire’s colored sticks” is a unique manual, it contains didactic materials on the logical-mathematical development of preschoolers;
• “We play with Dienesh's logic blocks. Training course for children 5-6 years old” - describes 24 lessons in the senior group in logic and mathematics.

Playing and learning with counting sticks

High-quality, interesting educational toys are not cheap. And more often than not, such toys only perform one function - they develop logical thinking or fine motor skills, creative or sensory perception. But how I would like to buy an interesting, exciting and inexpensive game that could interest a child for a long time and would be multifunctional (develop everything in a complex way).

Let's first think about what we mean by the words “educational toy”? What qualities should she have? In fact, the phrase “educational toy” is not entirely correct, although we use it everywhere in everyday life. The most ordinary doll with which a child plays role-playing games develops no less than any “developmental” toy. However, there are games and toys whose task is exclusively to develop intellectual abilities - mathematical concepts, logical thinking, speech. They are most often classified as developing.

Our universal toy should develop intellectual and creative abilities, be multifunctional, that is, so that it can be played with in different ways, used in creative activities, role-playing games. Because it is precisely this kind of toy that truly develops a child.

And there is such a toy! True, many mothers do not even think about purchasing it, since “officially” it is not intended for games at all, but for school activities and lies on the shelf next to stationery. These are the ordinary counting sticks familiar to us all.

So, how can you use counting sticks as an educational toy?

1. “Nimble fingers . You can develop fine motor skills in your baby's hands from about nine months of age, when he begins to develop a pincer grip (he begins to grab objects with his thumb and index finger). Use a knife or scissors to make a slit in the counting stick case and show your little one how to put sticks in it one at a time. Such a game can captivate a child for a long time, because children love to put objects into holes and hide them. But the baby should play under your supervision, because... At this age, everything that the eye sees is immediately put into the mouth by quick fingers.

2. Arrange by color. At about the same age, you can begin to teach your baby to sort sticks by color. To begin, select sticks of two colors and show how they can be arranged into two different piles. You can invite your child to put the sticks into boxes or bags. When the baby learns to cope with the task, add sticks of another color. This game develops sensory perception, the ability to compare, find similarities and differences, and introduces the child to the logical operations of analysis and synthesis at an elementary level.

3. In the world of plasticine. Usually at the age of one to one and a half years, the child begins to be offered a variety of creative tasks, including, of course, games with plasticine. The ability to combine various materials in the creative process develops not only imagination and creativity, but also the ability to think outside the box. Counting sticks go well with plasticine. They can become:

• hedgehog's spines
• stem of a flower
• tree trunk
• fence in a plasticine world
• pipe near a plasticine house
• arms and legs of a plasticine man
• mushroom stem

And many more different items that your imagination will tell you.

4. Play geometry. When to start introducing a child to mathematics, parents decide for themselves. Someone is already hanging numbers and geometric shapes above the crib... And someone is waiting until the child is four or five years old. Or when the baby himself shows interest in mathematics. In any case, learning mathematics with counting sticks is very convenient. They will not only help you learn to count, but also introduce you to geometric shapes, help you explain very clearly and clearly to your child what an angle, a side is, how a square differs from a rectangle, how you can get another from one shape, and much, much more. Can:

• lay out geometric shapes from counting sticks
• lay out geometric shapes from counting sticks along the drawn contour
• play transformations: make others from some geometric shapes. A child can simply watch these magical transformations, and an older child (from 4-5 years old) can be asked to complete tasks himself: “How to make a rhombus from a square? What about a parallelogram? How can you turn a square into a trapezoid by adding one stick? In triangles? How many sticks must be removed from a square to turn it into a triangle? How many sticks must be added to turn the square into a rectangle? If you practice with sticks of the same color, then all changes by adding the number of sticks (from a triangle - a square, from a square - a trapezoid or rectangle, etc.) for greater clarity, you can do it using sticks of a different color. For example, you show a child a figurine, then he turns away, and you perform the transformation. After this, the child must look at the result and answer the question “what has changed” and try to understand how it happened.
• introduce geometric concepts Using sticks, you can very clearly and clearly explain to your child what a side (stick) is and what an angle is (the place where one stick meets another). You can explain to your child what a diameter is and why the size of a circle depends on the diameter. To do this, just place two sticks next to each other on a sheet of paper and draw a circle of the appropriate diameter around them. Two sticks are the diameter of the circle, one stick is the radius. And if you take three sticks and draw a new circle, it will turn out larger than the previous one, since the length of the diameter has become larger.

5. “Cognitive paths.” By the age of two, a child becomes familiar with the concepts of “wide”/“narrow”, “long”/“short”. This can be done by laying out tracks of counting sticks. Show your child how to make a wide or long path out of sticks. We place the sticks side by side - one next to the other - the path turns out to be wide, but short. And if you put one stick to the tip of another, the path will turn out to be very long, but narrow. We take one stick - this is a short path. We put another stick on it - the path has become longer. One more - the path became even longer. This way you can introduce your child to the concepts of “short”, “long”, “longest”, “shortest”. The child will see that the more sticks there are in the path, the longer it will be. And if you use sticks together with plasticine, you can introduce the child to the concepts of “high” and “low.”

6. Learning to count. Of course, counting sticks are an excellent material for teaching counting. At the age of approximately two years, the child already begins to operate with the concepts of “one” and “many”. He begins to count to two, and by the age of three or three and a half years he counts within five (this refers to the quantitative recognition of objects, and not the mechanical naming of a sequence of numbers). Using counting sticks, you can clearly demonstrate the composition of a number, get acquainted with the simplest mathematical operations of addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, and study the concepts of number and quantity.

For children two to three years old.

• Take one stick from the pile and place it separately. The kid must show where there is one stick and where there are many.
• Take two sticks, tell the child that there are two sticks. Look together for other pairs of objects (two arms, two legs, two eyes, maybe two chairs in the room, etc.). Explain that if you take one and another, you get two.
• Teach your child to correlate the number of objects and their numerical designation. Draw cards with numbers from one to five. Show him no more than one new card per day with a number and the corresponding number of sticks. On the first day, place a card with the number 1 and one stick in front of him, the next day add a card with the number 2, and so on.
• Place cards with numbers from one to five vertically, and next to each card the corresponding number of sticks. Please pay attention to the child that the number of sticks is constantly increasing by one (one and one more - two, two and one more - three, three and one more - four and so on).
• If you see that the child easily recognizes the number of objects within five and correlates them with numbers, invite him to select the required number of sticks for the cards himself.

Children 4-5 years old are already free to operate with quantities within 10, but it is still difficult for them to perform mental addition and subtraction operations; it can be difficult to determine by eye the number of objects more than 5-6 (they count them).

For children from four years old.

• To study the relationship between number and quantity, take cards from 0 to 10. Lay out the cards vertically, and place the corresponding number of sticks next to each card. Please pay attention to the child that the number of sticks increases by one all the time.
• Give your child cards with numbers. He must take the appropriate number of sticks.
• We study the composition of the number. How can you decompose the number 5? For clarity, take sticks of two different colors and lay out the number 5 from them: for example, two blue and three yellow. Or one blue and four yellow, etc.
• Invite your child to guess for himself how many sticks he needs to add to a certain number. For example, you lay out four sticks. How many more sticks do you need to add to make it ten?
• With the help of sticks, you can clearly explain to a 5-6 year old child what an “example” is and how the operations of subtraction and addition are indicated. Take two sticks of one color and three sticks of a different color. Ask your child how many sticks there are. Then place a plus sign between the sticks of different colors, and put their numerical designations above the sticks (2 × 3). To explain the subtraction operation, take five sticks and a card with the number 5. Then take two sticks, and next to the card with the number put a card with a minus sign and a card with the number 2. Ask the child how many sticks are left (cards can be replaced with numbers from the magnetic alphabet).
• If you see that the child understands your explanations, you can introduce him to the equal sign
• Lay out the expression using chopsticks, and the child will also have to use chopsticks to lay out the answer after the equal sign. When the child begins to confidently cope with the task, replace the sticks with numerical symbols. Do not give your child complex examples with large numbers; solve problems within tens. It is important for a child to understand the meaning and principles of addition and subtraction, and later multiplication and division.

Once your child can add and subtract within ten, you can introduce multiplication and division.

• To do this you will need sticks and number cards and some toys. For example, take figurines of a cow, horse and sheep. You have three animals (place a card with the number three in front of the child). Each animal has three tasty carrots (place three red or orange sticks in front of each animal and take another card with the number three). How to calculate how many carrots animals have? To do this, you need to multiply three (put a multiplication sign between the cards with numbers) by three, that is, take three times three. Count how many carrots you will get if there are two animals, and each one takes three carrots. What if you give three animals two each? To understand the principle of division, take several stick carrots and ask your child to divide them equally between three animals. The number of carrots each toy ends up with will be the result of division. Divide different numbers of carrots between different numbers of animals. You can show your child that it is not always possible to divide objects equally without leaving a remainder.
• Using sticks and cards with numbers, you can explain to your child how a number differs from a number and from a quantity. To do this you will need sticks and cards with numbers from zero to nine. Explain to your child that there are only 10 numbers. When a number represents a quantity, it becomes a number. All numbers are made up of numbers. You can show your child large two and three digit numbers and name them. Let the child name the numbers from which they are made. For example, in order to write the number 10, you need to take two digits one and zero. The number of objects can be very large, so in order to somehow designate them, numbers and numbers were invented. Together with your child, place the corresponding number of sticks next to the number cards.

If your child is already able to count and perform simple operations within 10, you can move on to introducing two-digit numbers.

• To demonstrate what a ten is, display it in one color and the second order numbers in another. Eleven is ten blue sticks and one yellow, twelve is ten blue and two yellow, and so on.

7. Draw with sticks. You can lay out anything you want from sticks on a plane. Make a road out of them, and the child will be happy to roll cars along it. Lay out a pedestrian crossing, take the dolls and learn the rules of the road. Using sticks, you can plant colorful flowers on the floor, draw houses, cars, angular cats or dogs, birds and fish, little people - whatever you want. The more sticks, the more interesting. This game perfectly develops a child's imagination.

8. Sticks - designer. To play you will need counting sticks and plasticine balls. By connecting sticks using plasticine, you can build a variety of three-dimensional shapes. We develop not only imagination, creative thinking and spatial perception, but also get acquainted with geometric bodies (cube, cone, prism).

9. “Logical chains”. Laying out logical chains with a certain rhythm using sticks helps the child develop sensory perception, attentiveness, logical thinking, and understanding of sequences. This game can have two options: either you lay out your chain of sticks, and the child must lay out the same chain as yours, or you start laying out a chain with a certain rhythm and ask the child to continue it (the second option, of course, is more difficult). "Rhythm" can be a changing sequence of colors of sticks or their arrangement. Start with the simplest chains, for example, alternating yellow and green sticks. Make the tasks more difficult gradually. You can change the location of the sticks, place them horizontally or vertically, and use different color combinations.

10. Substitute toys. The ability to use substitute objects in play activities is a necessary element in the development of children's play. The simplest example of this phenomenon is a palm placed on the ear and representing a telephone receiver. A child can enthusiastically move a piece of bread around the table like a car, feed dolls with cake cubes and shoot with his index finger at an invisible enemy. Counting sticks fit perfectly into role-playing games. Children most often imagine them as spoons and spoons and feed them to dolls; sometimes the sticks become tiny automatic weapons and guns, and from a bunch of sticks placed in a toy saucepan you can cook excellent spaghetti.

The imagination of a child and passionate parents is limitless...

Mitlina Maria

Entertaining games with magic wands for preschoolers

Below I will give schemes for working with Cuisenaire’s counting material; however, we play in exactly the same way with ordinary matches, toothpicks, and chopsticks:

• We build a ladder of 10 elements on the table from smallest to largest. We walk along the rungs with our fingers and count back and forth;
• Now we lay out the ladder with the missing elements: the child fills in the gaps;
• Mirror reflection: an adult selects elements of a certain length, color, arranges them, and the child repeats in the same way;
• Oral tasks: lay out three red sticks, put them in a row, lay out a path, a triangle, etc.;
• Remember the figure: the adult constructs something from sticks, invites the child to look carefully and turn away. The adult changes something in the design, the child names it and restores the structure;
• Templates: an adult lays out a figure and asks to add 2 more elements to the template, then 3, etc.
• Shorter and longer: we work with colored sticks. An adult takes a stick, for example, red and invites the child to find a green one, but shorter than a red one. Using the same principle, we try to find sticks with a different sign.
• ​ More or less: put the sticks into two unequal piles, ask them to name where in which pile there are more (fewer) sticks;
• Please take any 2 elements, but not blue ones. Or find 2 sticks of the same color, but different sizes;
• 38 parrots: measure the length of the machine and table with short sticks. We find out how many short sticks “fit” in a long one, etc.;
• Right-left: find the shortest and longest sticks, place them so that the long one is on the right and the short one is on the left (front-back, top-bottom, etc.);
• We make a ladder and invite the child to add elements to make squares or rectangles;
• Children in the preparatory group are ready for the following tasks: with your eyes closed, find two sticks of the same length and place them on the table next to each other. If you spend enough time playing with Cuisenaire sticks from a young age, the child will even be able to find sticks of a certain color with his eyes closed. The fact is that these sticks are grouped by size and color.

First stage exercises

Lessons with Cuisenaire cubes take place in two stages: familiarization with the material and formation of the concept of numbers.
First you need to develop visual memory and fine motor skills. Children are asked to distribute all the sticks into groups by color, fold them into a ladder or other shapes. Then the blocks are classified according to other characteristics - length, class of numbers, and simple arithmetic operations are performed. Game lessons begin at one year of age. At this age, children perform familiarization tasks:

• just look at the blocks;
• say the colors of the sticks out loud;
• name other characteristics - length, number value;
• They are trying to build certain shapes from blocks, which their parents will name.

It is better to put such activities in the form of a fairy tale. For example, about a sweet tooth who cannot choose a candy. Whether it is worth eating one red one or several white ones will be determined by the child himself. This way he will learn to add and subtract. You can ask your child to build fences for the little piglets - tall blue for one, medium-sized orange sticks for the second and low white for the third. This will help you learn to compare different quantities.

By the age of three, the list of tasks increases:

• you need to arrange the blocks according to length and shade;
• repeat all the actions of an adult - lay out a figure or line up sticks the way dad or mom did;
• memorization tasks - you need to place blocks in front of the child in a certain order, then remove one of them and ask the child to restore the row;
• measuring the length of surrounding objects using one stick;
• Compare the sizes of different products by touch with your eyes closed.

>

Making the task more difficult for older children

It's time to complicate developmental tasks; they can be offered not only to older preschoolers, but also to younger schoolchildren:

• Make a train where the first carriage consists of 4 sticks, the second – of 6, the third – of 8;
• Take as many sticks as possible in your hand. Without opening your palm, count them. Lay out the corresponding numbers from the sticks;
• Lay out cards or cubes with numbers, the child places the corresponding number of sticks next to them;
• We teach the equal sign: we put 5-6 sticks, we invite the child to put the same number next to it. Between two piles we place two sticks in parallel;
• To a certain number of sticks you need to add enough to get a certain number. For example, we add 2 sticks to 3, we get 5. This is how we learn simple addition;
• Puzzles with sticks work great: we lay out a figure and invite the child to add or remove sticks to create another figure. There are diagrams on the Internet that you can print for yourself;
• In “collaboration” with Dienesh blocks, we propose to create a city with roads, houses, bridges and play out a whole story.

In my opinion, it turned out to be a decent file cabinet for home use, what do you think? Yes, and in a preschool educational institution it will be useful. Of course, there are many more exercises and creative tasks with counting sticks, but you can’t fit everything into a more or less readable article.

If you liked the material, like and share! I'm also waiting for new subscribers!

Sincerely, Tatyana Sukhikh! Till tomorrow!

By the way, I recommend reading:

Progress of the lesson

Educator: gathers children around him and shows them a magic box. Then she explains to the children that the box contains a surprise that she has prepared for them. But in order to open the box, you need to complete some tasks. If the children cope, they will get a surprise.

Educator:

— Are you ready to complete the tasks?

Guys, open the boxes with colored counting sticks .

The teacher suggests building a train from Kusener sticks , arranging the stick cars from shortest to longest.

— Place the corresponding number under each stick .

— What number represents the blue carriage? (9)

.

-Name the color of the car that represents the number 1 more than 9. (Orange)

.
This will be the number (10)
- Name what color the trailer standing between 7 and 5 (Purple,

-Name the number indicating the yellow carriage. (Five)

— What color is the car to the left of the pink one? (White)

.

— Find the car that is next to the red one, but not the yellow one (Blue)

.

Educator:

- Guys, I was just told by phone that an orange car on our train broke down. Let's fix the carriage using sticks , only one condition is to use sticks that are smaller than burgundy. Do you already know what number represents orange? (10)

If we don't have enough
sticks , we can borrow them from the box.
Children select different options for the composition of the number 8.

— What options did you choose? (8 -2, (5 – 5, (9 – 1, (6 – 4)

.

Educator: lays out all the said options on the board under an orange stick .

Educator:

Let's name them again.

— The white stick represents the number 1 , and the blue stick represents the number 9.

So these are 1 and 9, and together they will be 10.

— The pink stick represents the number 2 , and the burgundy stick represents the number 8.

So these are 2 and 8, and together they will be 10.

writes down numerical expressions next to his sticks

Educator:

“I suggest you go on a trip on the train that you and I built.” But for this you need to buy tickets. The teacher gives each child one geometric figure. The children look and take their places. They answer why they sat down like that. If someone makes a mistake, it is corrected.

Educator:

In the meantime, you and I are going, so that we don’t get bored, a little “Mental warm-up”

Listen carefully to the riddles and try to answer correctly!

- What is the name of a figure without corners? (Circle.)

— What is the name of a figure that has many angles? (Polygon.)

- How many sides does the rectangle have? (Four.)

— What is the name of a figure with three corners? (Triangle.)

— How many giraffes swim in the sea? (Giraffes don't swim.)

-What does a person have more - eyes or ears? (equal amounts of eyes and ears.)

- Well done!

Educator:

We didn't notice how we arrived.

Here's the first stop, "Count It Up"

. Come out.

We will walk very deftly on our tiptoes, one after another, stand together in a semicircle, and begin to play with numbers. (Children walk on their toes and stand in a semicircle)

.

Didactic game "Find your hoop"