Math Learning Steps

Part and whole

Seeing a whole thing as being made up of its parts is an important developmental step for a child. The number bonds for a number, say 6, are all the ways of pairing two numbers that add up to 6. It is all the ways of taking the whole of 6 and breaking it into two parts. This reinforces an understanding of the connection between addition and subtraction as forming groups of fact families – a topic to be covered in an upcoming learning step.

What’s missing ?

Let’s continue using number bonds for 6 as our example. The number bonds for 6 are: 0 + 6, 1 + 5, 2 + 4, and 3 + 3. A child who has learned these well will then have little trouble answering the question: “What do I need to add to 2 to get 6?” They will know that 2 + 4 is a number bond for 6, so 4 is the part of 6 that is missing.

Ten frames

Fluency with number bonds for all numbers up to about 12 is very useful for doing adding and subtracting, The number bonds that arise the most often are those for 10. Ten frames are designed to help visualize number bonds for 10. A ten frame with 7 dots in it makes it visually obvious that 7 + 3 is a number bond for 10.

Games and puzzles

There are quite a few games and puzzles that involve number bonds. Sum Groups is a puzzle designed to practice number bonds. Many games, such as Memory Challenge and Go Fish, have versions that use target totals and thereby exercise number bonds.