With the help of various teaching aids, parents can develop their children at home and independently prepare for school. One of them is colored Cuisenaire counting sticks for teaching numbers in the form of a game. This manual promotes the development of many useful skills; it is multifunctional and easy to use for adults and children. Working with blocks for children is always very exciting. Check out their characteristics and examples of exercises.

What are Cuisenaire's wands?

This manual gets its name from the Belgian educator who created it. George Cuisenaire developed special blocks that help master the laws of mathematics. The game material has a second name - “numbers in color”. The cuisenaire set includes canes of 10 different colors and sizes from a centimeter to ten. The set is a complex mathematical set.

Description of the technique

The Cuisenaire set is used to develop a child's interest in mathematics in game form at home, this is the main goal. Logic games Curious kids will love it. Teaching mathematics in a playful way with the Cuisenaire set is based on the principle of clarity. If a child sees an object and can even touch it, it will be much easier for him to understand the science of counting. It will also be easier for parents to explain mathematics to their children using visual aids. teaching aids. Characteristics of Cuisenaire's rods that a child remembers and distinguishes:

• color;
• concept of numerical value;
• length.

What can you teach a child

The main purpose of the Cuisenaire set is to help the child become familiar with mathematics. However, with its help, the baby will be able to learn much more. He will be able to learn:

• compose colored numbers and letters, while matching symbols with concepts;
• distinguish how objects are located in space (in front and behind, right and left, between, middle, below and above);
• mathematical concepts (number, figure, figure, more and less, equally, etc.);
• basic math skills: addition and subtraction;
• disassemble numbers into components;
• understand what quantity is, how numbers and figures relate;
• determine the previous and next numbers for the current one within the first ten.

Colored Cuisenaire counting sticks - characteristics of developmental material

What is the set? Cuisenaire sticks are parallelepipeds made of plastic or wood. They are painted in different colors. Each shade has its own length (1-10 cm) and its own number from one to ten. Based on similar colors, bars are grouped into families or classes of the same multiplicity. There are five such groups in total. It is worth talking in more detail about the meaning of the color and length of the bars.

Number of counting sticks in a set

There are sets of different sizes. The simplest one has 116 pieces, but it is preferable to buy those with more material. For example, in the classic set of counting aids there are 241 of them. This will significantly expand the list of games and tasks that you can offer your child. Quantity of each color in a cuisenaire set of 116 bars:

• white – 25;
• pink – 20;
• blue – 16;
• red – 12;
• yellow – 10;
• purple – 9;
• black – 8;
• burgundy – 7;
• blue – 5;
• orange – 4.

Color spectrum

The selection of sticks according to shades was not done by chance. They are grouped according to the principles of similar shade and multiplicity. The length of the bar corresponds to the number assigned to it. All relationships between the strips can be traced by studying the following table:

Age category

It doesn’t matter how old the baby is. If it is interesting to play with blocks, then it is allowed to do so. As a rule, children show the first signs of curiosity towards them when they are one year old. This means you can start educational games, gradually increasing their complexity. Interest in typing naturally fades away in a child around the elementary grades of school, when he has already mastered the basics of mathematics.

Educational games and activities with cuiseneur sticks

The teaching method is suitable for a child of any age. Preschoolers will have a lot of fun playing with the set; older children will find it useful as a math teaching tool. Parents are offered a huge amount of materials, which present ready-made games, scenarios, and example tasks. All this makes it much easier to plan and conduct classes with inquisitive children. What can you do with the benefit (in stages, depending on age) using the Cuisenaire method:

1. Play. The child lays them out and sorts them out.
2. Compare as analogues of numbers. If you indicate the difference between them, the child will clearly understand the difference between “more” and “less”.
3. Post the numbers.
4. Explain the principles of addition and subtraction.
5. Lay out in mosaics, recognizing their numerical relationships and meanings.
6. Summarizing the essence of arithmetic operations. Gradually, you will develop your baby's mathematical abilities.

Introduction to chopsticks for little ones

At first, the baby will simply play with the counting material, like with cubes. Then offer to play “Find Me.” Give your child the following tasks in any order:

• list the colors of all the bars;
• find the one that is longer than the red one and shorter than the blue one;
• find all the bars of the same shade;
• lay out strips of two colors, alternating red and blue;
• find a block that is NOT yellow;
• choose two strips and compare their length;
• find the shortest one and name the color;
• select one of each shade.

Help your child draw some conclusions. He should emphasize that stripes of the same color are equal in size. To do this, take a couple of any bars and ask your child questions:

1. Are these sticks different?
2. What is the same about them?
3. What's different?

Games with Cuisenaire sticks

There are many fun activities with blocks. You can purchase special materials with examples or even come up with games yourself. A few simple options:

1. “Take a guess.” Hide one block. The child guesses what color it is by asking “yes” and “no” questions. For example, “Is the missing stick shorter than the yellow one?”, “Is it longer than the black one?”
2. “Make a picture.” The kid, using the set as a constructor, puts together certain images, starting with the simplest ones and then increasing the complexity: square, triangle, fence, house, Christmas tree, etc.

Studying the color scheme

This is the first characteristic that a child should be introduced to. You can do this using the following games:

1. "Train". Let the child imagine that the cuisinaire's sticks are trailers. Ask your child to fold the colored striped “train” so that the orange “car” is to the left of the burgundy one, but to the right of the red one.
2. Dictation. Name the colors to the baby, and he takes out the corresponding bars from the general pile and lays them out from left to right.

Counting sticks

This stage of training is the most extensive. First you need to introduce your child to the sequence of natural numbers. Build horizontal, vertical, symmetrical ladders. The child will understand the basic law of the natural series: each number is one more than the previous one and less than the next one. Then you can begin to master direct and reverse counting using the same ladders as an example. Task options:

1. Give your child the third and fourth stripes (blue and red). Have him determine the larger number and check if it is correct by measuring the length of both with a white cube.
2. Move on to simple arithmetic. First, use an example to show that if you put a red block, and next to it a blue block with a white block, you will get segments of the same length (4 = 3 + 1). Gradually make the tasks more difficult. This will help you master addition. Then add examples in which one of the two sticks disappeared. These will be subtraction examples.
3. Learn to multiply. Place one white stick in front of the baby, the child will voice its meaning “one”. Add a second one, ask how much you get. Gradually you will master multiplication by two, showing longer and longer stripes.
4. Lay out 4 white cubes to make a square. Introduce your child to fractions and fractions. Ask him which part is larger: a quarter or a half.

Measurement-Based Jobs

This is very important stage classes. Examples of measurement tasks that you can set for your child:

1. Hide the red stripe. Tell your child that the one you hid is longer than the blue one, but shorter than the orange one. He will try to guess which one is hidden.
2. Measure with different sticks small items located in game room. Let the baby find things equal to the length of, for example, an orange block.
3. Build a path, skipping sections of different sizes. The child will fill them with suitable pieces.
4. Compare objects and bars several at a time, working through the concepts of “more”, “less”, “shorter”, “longer”.

Determine the composition of the number

Invite your child to make a train out of colored sticks, for example, pink, blue, red, yellow. These are carriages. Before seating passengers on the train, let the child name how many seats there are in each of them. It is necessary to do this in a practical way. The kid places white sticks on the carriages. One piece - one place. This work will lead to the understanding that each number consists of several ones.

Logic problems

A good option is “Riddles”. Model the situation for your child: a train consists of three cars. Yellow is in the middle. The pink trailer is not the first one in the lineup. The kid will try to figure out in what order to arrange the sticks in order to meet the conditions of this statement. As you go, complicate the logic block game task by asking additional questions:

1. How many passengers are there in each carriage?
2. Total on the train?
3. There are three carriages. Together they are the same length as the orange stick. What are their colors?
4. There are three identical carriages. They correspond in length to the blue and blue sticks. What color are they?

Three-dimensional thinking exercises with Cuisenaire sticks

Such tasks will help the child to reveal his creative side and become more independent. There are different levels of complexity, from drawing up different ladders for working out counting and arithmetic operations, to drawing up complex three-dimensional figures, composing fairy tales and stories. Such activities with children in groups are especially effective, but at home you can also entertain your child well and usefully.

Building a staircase

This is a very important exercise in which the child will be able to work on counting sequence and other skills. Performed in several stages different levels difficulties:

1. We are walking up the stairs. Let the child place stick “1” in front of him and say what color it is. Then “2”, etc. When the ladder is ready, he will walk up and then down with his fingers, counting at the same time. This helps you remember numbers quickly.
2. Let the little one lay out a number ladder. The kid collects a figure from a certain color, then from a number. You can complicate the task by skipping certain steps.

Composing figures

First, draw an object schematically on a sheet of paper in a box, draw stripes inside that need to be put there, sign their numbers. Let the child assemble the figure you have envisioned on paper. Then make the task more difficult. Draw the figure inside, but don’t put any numbers. Let the child repeat the task. The last stage is the most difficult. Draw only the outlines of the figure. Let the child fill it out at his own discretion, but do not go beyond the boundaries.

After your child masters drawing figures on paper, ask him to do it on a plane. Let him add whatever he wants, or whatever you wish for: a house, a flower, a tree. The most difficult stage for older children is drawing up three-dimensional three-dimensional figures. Cuisenaire's sticks in this case act as a construction set. You can use them to collect animals, build houses, cars, and even build entire scenes.

Schemes for Cuisenaire sticks

You will be able to find a huge number of drawings on sale. There are diagrams online that can be printed in the desired format. They need to be filled completely or partially with multi-colored blocks. You can also repeat the drawing on another surface, and then compare the shapes. Schemes can be black and white or colored. Classes on them develop children's logical and creative thinking, counting skills, and color representation. There are even schemes by which you can create three-dimensional plot drawings and even entire fragments from fairy tales.

How to make sticks with your own hands

Buying a set is easier than making it, but parents do not always have this opportunity. Store-bought bars are bulky, but making them at home is very difficult. It’s easier to make flat ones for the baby. Instructions:

Prepare 10 sheets of colored cardboard. The shades must correspond to those listed in the previously presented table.

The strip sizes will be doubled. Width 2 cm, length – 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18.20 cm.

Mark the colored sheets by drawing rulers in the quantity you need.

Cut the cardboard into colorful stripes sharp scissors.

Price of Cuisenaire sticks

Store-bought kits are inexpensive, but working with them is much more convenient. They can always be ordered from the online store with home delivery. Flat ones, made at home, have one advantage - low price, but with them many tasks are impossible to complete. For the approximate cost at which you can buy cuiseneur sticks, see the table below:

Video

Belgian teacher primary school George Cuisenaire (1891-1976) developed universal didactic material for developing children's mathematical abilities. In 1952, he published the book "Numbers and Colors", dedicated to his teaching aid.

Cuisenaire sticks are a set of counting sticks, which are also called “numbers in color”, “colored sticks”, “colored numbers”, “colored rulers”. The set contains tetrahedral sticks of 10 different colors and lengths from 1 to 10 cm. Cuisenaire developed the sticks so that sticks of the same length are made in the same color and indicate a certain number. The longer the stick, the greater the numerical value it expresses.

Cuisenaire counting sticks produced by manufacturers differ in quantity, color scheme and material (wood or plastic). To start, you can use a simplified set of 116 sticks. It contains 25 white sticks, 20 pink, 16 blue, 12 red, 10 yellow, 9 purple, 8 black, 7 burgundy, 5 blue and 4 orange. Cuisenaire sticks are mainly intended for activities with children from 1 to 7 years old.

Game tasks of colored sticks

Counting sticks Cuisenaire are a multifunctional mathematical aid that allows a child to form a concept “through the hands” of number sequence, the composition of a number, the relationships “more - less”, “right - left”, “between”, “longer”, “higher” and much more. Recruitment promotes development children's creativity, development of fantasy and imagination, cognitive activity, fine motor skills, visual-effective thinking, attention, spatial orientation, perception, combinatorial and design abilities.

At the initial stage of classes, Cuisenaire sticks are used as playing material. Children play with them as with ordinary cubes, sticks, construction sets, as they play and practice, becoming familiar with colors, sizes and shapes.

At the second stage, the sticks already act as a tool for little mathematicians. And here children learn to comprehend the laws of the mysterious world of numbers and other mathematical concepts.

Games and activities with Cuisenaire sticks

1. Let's get acquainted with chopsticks. Together with your child, look at, sort through, touch all the sticks, tell them what color and length they are.

2. Take as many sticks as possible in your right hand, and now in your left.

3. You can lay out paths, fences, trains, squares, rectangles, pieces of furniture, various houses, garages from sticks on a plane.

4. Lay out a ladder of 10 Cuisenaire sticks from the smallest (white) to the largest (orange) and vice versa. Walk your fingers along the steps of the ladder, you can count out loud from 1 to 10 and back.

5. Lay out the ladder, passing 1 stick at a time. The child needs to find a place for the missing sticks.

6. You can build three-dimensional buildings from sticks, like from a construction set: wells, turrets, huts, etc.

7. Arrange the sticks by color and length.

8. "Find a stick that is the same color as mine. What color are they?"

9. “Put down the same number of sticks as I have.”

10. “Lay out the sticks, alternating them by color: red, yellow, red, yellow” (later the algorithm becomes more complicated).

11. Lay out several Cuisenaire counting sticks, invite the child to remember them, and then, while the child is not looking, hide one of the sticks. The child needs to guess which stick has disappeared.

12. Lay out several sticks, ask the child to remember their relative positions

and swap them. The baby needs to return everything to its place.

13. Place two sticks in front of the child: “Which stick is longer? Which is shorter?” Place these sticks on top of each other, aligning the ends, and check.

14. Place several Cuisenaire sticks in front of the child and ask: “Which is the longest? Which is the shortest?

15. “Find any stick that is shorter than the blue one and longer than the red one.”

16. Place the sticks into 2 piles: one has 10 pieces, and the other has 2. Ask where there are more sticks.

17. Ask to show you a red stick, blue, yellow.

18. “Show me the stick so it’s not yellow.”

19. Ask to find 2 absolutely identical Cuisenaire rods. Ask: "How long are they? What color are they?"

20. Build a train out of carriages different lengths, starting from the shortest to the longest. Ask what color the carriage is fifth or eighth. Which carriage is to the right of the blue one, to the left of the yellow one. Which carriage is the shortest, the longest? Which carriages are longer than the yellow one, shorter than the blue one.

21. Lay out several pairs of identical sticks and ask the child to “put the sticks in pairs.”

22. Name the number, and the child will need to find the corresponding Cuisenaire stick (1 - white, 2 - pink, etc.). And vice versa, you show the stick, and the child calls the desired number. Here you can lay out cards with dots or numbers depicted on them.

23. From several sticks you need to make one the same length as burgundy and orange.

24. From several identical sticks you need to make one the same length as the orange one.

25. How many white sticks can fit in a blue stick?

26. Using an orange stick, you need to measure the length of a book, pencil, etc.

27. “List all the colors of the sticks lying on the table.”

28. “Find the longest and shortest stick in the set. Place them on top of each other; and now next to each other.”

29. “Choose 2 sticks of the same color. What length are they? Now find 2 sticks of the same length. What color are they?”

30. “Take any 2 sticks and place them so that the long one is at the bottom.”

31. Place three burgundy Cuisenaire counting sticks parallel to each other, and four of the same color on the right. Ask which figure is wider and which is narrower.

32. “Place the sticks from the lowest to the largest (parallel to each other). Attach the same row to these sticks on top, only in reverse order.” (You will get a square).

33. “Put the blue stick between the red and yellow, and the orange one to the left of the red one, and the pink one to the left of the red one.”

34. “With your eyes closed, take any stick from the box, look at it and name its color” (later you can determine the color of the sticks even with your eyes closed).

35. "With your eyes closed, find 2 sticks of the same length in the set. One of the sticks in your hands is blue, and then what color is the other?"

36. “With your eyes closed, find 2 sticks of different lengths. If one of the sticks is yellow, can you determine the color of the other stick?”

37. “I have a stick in my hands that’s a little longer than blue, guess its color.”

38. “Name all the sticks that are longer than the red one, shorter than the blue one,” etc.

39. “Find any two sticks that are not equal to this stick.”

40. We build a pyramid from Cuisenaire sticks and determine which stick is at the very bottom, which is at the top, which is between blue and yellow, under blue, above pink, which stick is lower: burgundy or blue.

41. “Lay out one of two white sticks, and next to it put a stick corresponding to their length (pink). Now we put three white sticks - the blue one corresponds to them,” etc.

42. “Take the chopsticks in your hand. Count how many sticks you have in your hand.”

43. Which two sticks can be used to make a red one? (number composition)

44. We have a white Cuisenaire counting stick. What stick should be added to make it the same length as red.

45. What sticks can be used to make the number 5? (different ways)

46. ​​How much longer is the blue stick longer than the pink one?

47. "Make two trains. The first one is pink and purple, and the second one is blue and red."

48. “One train consists of blue and red sticks. Using white sticks, make a train longer than the existing one by 1 carriage.”

49. “Make a train from two yellow sticks. Build a train of the same length from white sticks.”

50. How many pink sticks can fit in an orange stick?

51. Lay out four white Cuisenaire counting sticks to form a square. Based on this square, you can introduce your child to fractions and fractions. Show one part out of four, two parts out of four. What is greater - ¼ or 2/4?

52. “Make each of the numbers from 11 to 20 using sticks.”

53. Lay out a figure from Cuisenaire sticks, and ask the child to make the same one (in the future, you can cover your figure from the child with a sheet of paper).

54. The child lays out the sticks, following your instructions: “Put the red stick on the table, put the blue one on the right, yellow on the bottom,” etc.

55. Draw different geometric figures or letters and ask your child to place the red stick next to the letter "a" or in the square.

56. You can use sticks to build labyrinths, some intricate patterns, rugs, and figurines.

If the proposed games-tasks are few, you can lay out different figures according to the pictures-schemes. Ready-made diagrams can be found in the book by V. Novikova and L. Tikhonova “Educational games and activities with Cuisenaire sticks. Handout." Using this manual, you can make a flat version of cardboard sticks (cut them out of a colored insert). If such cardboard strips are glued onto strips of a magnet, then you can play with them by attaching them to a refrigerator or magnetic board.

Games with counting sticks

Tasks and exercises with counting sticks will allow children to develop fine motor skills, consolidate knowledge about the shape, size, spatial arrangement of objects, master the skills of composition of a plot drawing. The tasks are supplemented with riddles and poems.

It is possible to make teaching children how to count interesting. Try starting to use templates for counting stick games. These activities also develop fine motor skills. See examples of templates below.

Mill.

Tower

Fish

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 . 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 in the creative process various materials develops not only imagination and creativity, but also the ability to think outside the box. Counting sticks go well with plasticine. They may 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. Let's 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
The kid can just 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, by adding one stick, can you turn a square into a trapezoid? Into triangles? How many sticks must be removed from the square so that it turned into a triangle? How many sticks do you need to add to make the square turn 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 lookon the result and answer the question “what has changed” and try to understand how it happened.

introduce to geometric concepts
With the help of 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. What if you take three sticks and draw new circle, then it will turn out to be larger than the previous one, since the length of the diameter has become larger.

High-quality, interesting educational toys are not cheap. And more often than not, such toys perform only one function - they develop logical thinking or fine motor, creative or sensory skills. 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 a role-playing game develops no less than any “developmental” toy. However, there are games and toys whose task is exclusively to develop intellectual abilities - mathematical representations, logical thinking, speech. They are most often classified as developing.

Our universal toy should develop intellectual and Creative skills, be multifunctional, that is, such 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 . 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 may 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. Let's 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 out of a square? What about a parallelogram? How, by adding one stick, can you turn a square into a trapezoid? Into triangles? How many?” "Do you need to remove sticks from a square so that it turns into a triangle? And how many sticks do you need to add so that the square turns 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
  With the help of 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.

• 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. We 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 traffic. 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. Ability to use play activity Substitute objects are 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 toy car, feed dolls with cake cubes and shoot index finger against 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...

GAMES WITH COUNTING STICKS “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 tweezer grip (he begins to pick up objects with his thumb and forefinger). Make a slit using a knife or scissors in the counting case sticks and show the baby how to put sticks in it one at a time. Such a game can captivate the baby 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 What the eye sees, the quick fingers immediately put it into the mouth. We arrange them by color. At about the same age, you can begin to teach your child to sort sticks by color. To begin, select sticks of two colors and show how they can be sorted into two different piles. You can offer it to the child put the sticks in 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 baby to the logical operations of analysis and synthesis at an elementary level. 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: thorns in a hedgehog, a stem in a flower, a tree trunk, a fence in a plasticine world, a pipe in a plasticine house, the arms and legs of a plasticine man, a mushroom leg, and many other different objects that your imagination will tell you. Let's 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. You can: lay out geometric shapes from counting sticks lay out geometric shapes from counting sticks along a drawn contour play transformations: make others from some geometric figures. 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 do you need to add so that the square turns into a rectangle?" If you practice with sticks of the same color, then all changes with the addition of the number of sticks (from a triangle - a square, from a square - a trapezoid or rectangle, etc.) for greater clarity can be do using sticks of a different color. For example, you show the child a figurine, then he turns away, and you make 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 a child what a side (a stick) is and what an angle is (the place where one stick meets another). You can explain to a child what a diameter is, and why the size of a circle depends on the diameter. To do this It is enough to place two sticks next to each other on a sheet of paper and draw a circle of the corresponding 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. "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 put 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 long, 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”. 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). 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 operation of subtraction, 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 your child how many sticks are left (the 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. We 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. 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). "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. 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.