Number Bonds - A Guide for Parents
What are number bonds?
Number bonds are a pair of numbers that add together to make a larger number. Number bonds are also known as addition and subtraction facts, facts families, number stories and doubtless other names too. Parents are often unfamiliar with the names which sometimes causes concern, but number bonds are simply combinations of numbers that fit together.
How to teach number bonds?
Children must first know the number bonds to 10 and then move on to learn the number bonds to 20. Understanding number bonds provides your child with a solid foundation that will help them to do more complex addition and subtraction calculations in future.
Understanding number bonds up to 10 means knowing that the number 10 can be made up out of the following pairs of numbers:
- 0 and 10
- 1 and 9
- 2 and 8
- 3 and 7
- 4 and 6
- 5 and 5
The feature video at the very top of this article shows all the addition number bonds to 10.
These addition bonds to ten are naturally related to the subtraction bonds to 10, which we can see in this video:
If your child has instant recall of each of these number bonds and all of the ways they can fit together, they’ll be well on the way to dealing with arithmetic confidently and quickly. Ideally, they’ll also know number bonds to 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Once your child has mastered these, the number bonds for all the numbers up to 20 are also useful to know. For example, immediately knowing that 17 is made up of 8 and 9 makes subtraction much easier.
Number bonds the Singapore maths way
This video shows number bonds using the concept of "whole and parts" - an idea that comes from the Singapore maths programme.
Why are number bonds important?
Knowing number bonds fluently up to ten is one of the foundations to more complex arithmetic such as adding and subtracting with the ‘column methods’ as well as mental addition and subtraction to 100 and beyond.
They also help with addition and subtraction bridging 10. If you want to work out 16 – 8, for example, you can use the following thought process:
- 8 is made up of 6 and 2
- 16 – 6 is 10, that’s easy
- 10 is made of 8 and 2
- 10 – 2 is 8
- So 16 – 8 = 8
Next steps
Now you understand exactly what number bonds (number fact families/number stories) are, and their importance as a bridge to more advanced maths skills, how well does your child know them?
Our Kickstart Number bonds quizzes are a great (and free!) way to find out. It's a quick number bonds game that's easy and fun for kids, but the clever bit is that parents receive instant and private feedback on how well their child did with suggestions to help them improve.
I’m Ged, Co-founder of Komodo, ex-maths teacher and dad. If you have any questions please get in touch.
About Komodo – Komodo is a fun and effective way to boost primary maths skills. Designed for 4 to 11 year olds to use in the home, Komodo uses a little and often approach to learning maths (20 minutes, three to five times per week) that fits into the busy routine. Komodo helps users develop fluency and confidence in maths – without keeping them at the screen for long.
And now we've got Komodo English too - check it out here.
