c-rods and synesthesia?

Just before we started using Miquon and cuisenaire rods, I asked Sparkle what color the numbers from 1-10 were. Although her internal colors matched the colors of the c-rods in some cases (2 is red; 9 is blue) there was a mis-match for other numbers.

I was curious if the color/number mis-match would cause problems. So far I've noticed a couple of times when it's caused problems. Once I was check to see if Sparkle had memorized the color-number correspondence for the c-rods and asked, "What color is eight?" She answered "green" without batting an eye. Fortunately I remembered that "green" is her internal color for eight, and I rephrased my question, "What color is the rod that is 8 cm long?" Again, without any hesitation, she answered, "Oh, brown, I thought you meant the color of the number, not the color of the rod."

The next time I noticed the color/number mis-match was when she was picking out rods. I told her to pick out two of each color. So she did, starting with 10 and counting down. When she got to six, she grabbed the yellow rods. Yellow is her internal color for the number six. However, with c-rods, the 6cm rod is dark green and the yellow rod is only 5cm. When I pointed out her error, she quickly corrected herself. (Side note - if she'd been counting up, I wonder if she would have made the same error or not?)

Overall Sparkle's amazing memory is usually able to keep the colors of "numbers" versus the colors of "rods" straight. So, I think that we will continue to use the rods. However, if she weren't able to keep the two sets of colors straight, I'd have to give up the program.