starting Miquon

I started using Miquon with Sparkle today. I didn't use any of the books, but just let her play with the rods on the table. The one rule was that all the rods had to stay on the table, away from the edge. Sparkle immediately started building a three-dimensional house.

Turns out c-rods were one of the favorite math games in Sparkle's old classroom. With a bit of questioning I found that the kids just played with the c-rods and the teacher never gave any instruction in using them. Hum. While I am coming to understand that c-rods are a great math manipulative, I don't think that kids will learn much from them without any guidance.

I'm glad that Sparkle got to play with the c-rods before I started with them. She was already familiar with the different colors and the relative sizes. She build a staircase and identified the number of different colors. However, she did discover that the rods increased in length by one "marshmallow." (Marshmallow being what she called the little, white 1cm cubes.) I had colored a base-10 flat in the pattern of the AL-Abacus and lined up rods along the edge. Sparkle was able to tell at a glance what "number" goes with each rod. Then I built a train and lined it up with the patterned flats and again, Sparkle was able to tell the difference between 14 and 17 cm trains at a glance. I want to get some wooden base-10 rods and color code them, but I don't yet know a local store that sells them.

I'll still be using RightStart math with Sparkle, but now she'll do Miquon as well. Previously I had been confused by people who did two math programs, but now I'm starting to see the beauty of combining programs.

Oh, and I am very grateful to the mom who showed me how she uses Miquon with her children. It helped that she explained that she just goes through the workbook pages sequentially without a lot of other instruction that I was worried about.