What are Number Bonds? A Guide For Parents
What are number bonds?
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 name which for some causes concern, but they're simply combinations of numbers that fit together.
Number bonds are introduced in Kindergarten.
What do children need to know?
Children must know the number bonds that make 10.
10 can be made up out of:
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 10 are naturally related to the subtraction bonds to 10 as seen in this video:
If children have instant recall of each of these number bonds and all the ways they can fit together, they’ll be well on the way to dealing with equations confidently and quickly. Ideally, they’ll also know their number bonds to 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Once your child has mastered these, the number bonds for numbers up to 20 are also useful to know – immediately knowing that (for example) 17 is made up of 8 and 9 makes subtraction much less stressful.
Number bonds the Singapore math way
This video shows number bonds using the concept of "whole and parts" - an idea that comes from the Singapore math program.
Why are they important?
Knowing your number bonds fluently up to ten is one of the foundations to more complex math 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 are, and their importance as a bridge to more advanced math skills, how well does your child know them?
Our Kickstart Number bonds quizzes are a great (& free) way to find out. It's a quick quiz 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-math teacher, and dad. If you have any questions please get in touch.
About Komodo – Komodo is a fun and effective way to boost elementary math skills. Designed for 5 to 11-year-olds to use in the home, Komodo uses a little and often approach to learning math (15 minutes, three to five times per week) that fits into the busy routine. Komodo helps users develop fluency and confidence in math – without keeping them at the screen for long.
And now we've got Komodo English too - check it out here.
