My homemade version of (montessori) large rods

I've finally completed making my homemade version of the large number rods.

I could only find a large enough sheet of corrugated board in yellow and green, but not red or blue. I wanted a large single sheet to make the longest rod so that I wouldnt need to tape two rods together to make a single long one. Shorter coloured boards are easily bought at Tesco, whilst the large sheet (more than 1m in length) was bought at Jasema Stationery shop at Rahim Kajai side of Tmn Tun.

I obtained the dimensions of the rods from websites selling the large number rods commercially. The first rod measures 2.5cm (width) x 10cm (length)  x 2.5cm (thick). The second rod's length increases by 10cm. Each subsequent rod's length increases by 10cm.

In my version, the difference is that I didnt follow the thickness. To make it less flimsy (especially the longest rod at 1meter) I stuck two layers together, with double sided sticky tape. The bottom layer is a single piece, whilst the top layer is made up of alternating coloured short pieces. To make it stronger, the "veins" of the top and bottom layer are horizontal and vertical respectively.

My sticky tape was available in 1.8cm width so that was perfect for me. That's also easily available at Tesco, Jusco, large stationery shops.

As the child picks up the rods from one to ten, they learn sensorially through visual (1=shortest to 10=longest) and weight (1=lightest to 10=heaviest). They are meant to carry the rods at opposite ends to further enhance the difference (1=arms are near, to 10=arms stretched far).

Although my son already knows his numbers from 1 to 20 (now I'm teaching him the tens 20,30,40 etc), I wasn't sure if he understood which number was "bigger" than or "smaller" than another number. So I made this activity (as well as the spindle box) to teach him that.

Here's a video from YouTube illustrating how it's used.


This is another video on it. This lady uploaded a lot of Montessori videos, which were very helpful to me. In her version of the large rods, it's all in red (not alternating colour). I tried doing it with him in a single colour (yellow) with and without lines demarkating the sections, but he wasnt interested.