Cuisenaire has been going so many years! I used it as a child 50 years ago. It is excellent.

Having used both the plastic and the wooden ones I would recommend spending a little more and getting the wooden ones if you want your child to really enjoy using them. The feel of wood is a pleasure. The feel of plastic is not the same experience.

One reviewer wanted notches on it but that would detract from the versatility of the product. Finding out the value of a rod by placing the small cubes along it embeds the value in the brain by visual, auditory and kinaesthetic pathways. Stronger than just counting the notches would do.

When first introducing this to a child of any age I let them just play with it to get a feel of the properties and the different and relative lengths. Children, on the whole don't get enough hands on manipulative experience because adults want them to quickly move on to 'real math'. But this is real math. The understanding at a deep level the properties of number and quantity.

Love the feel of wood. The small set is doing us just fine, and they feel really good in your hands. All my kids like them whether they are using them for the book or not!

I think that these rods would be more helpful for learning math if they had notches so the student could see what number they are representing.