Create a simple counting game to practise number bonds to 10 using flowers! This is the simplest and quickest little maths game I set up for my 6 year old to help her practise her number bonds to 10. It took about 3 minutes to make and has many opportunities for learning through play.
Learning the number bonds or pairs to 10 is a really important early maths skill as it helps develop a great mental maths skill for all future maths learning. As long as you know that 6 and 4 make 10, you then know that 16 and 4 makes 20, 60 and 40 makes 100 and so on.
Equipping young children with a really simple, visual way to practise these number bonds is a helpful tool. Learning maths facts through worksheets is particularly unhelpful, as it’s 2-dimensional and only appeals to one type of learning. Learning in a kinaesthetic, hands-on way is absolutely the most effective!
We found an egg carton with 12 holes and cut it down around the edges so that it was left with only 10. Then we simply found some fabric flowers in two different colours and counted out 10 of each into small buckets ready to use. You could use two sets of ANY objects, e.g. coloured lego bricks or small edible items. Use what you have to hand and make it fun!
The simple idea of this type of 10 frame is that there are 10 spaces and any number of combinations represents 10. I.e. 4 purple flowers and 6 white flowers is 10, 5 purple flowers and 5 white flowers is 10, all 10 flowers is 10 and 0 etc.
Through putting the flowers in and counting them, the various combinations of numbers that form number bonds (or pairs/ partners) to 10 are formed in a clearly visual way.
The number bonds to 10 are:
0 + 10
1 + 9
3 + 7
4 + 6
5 + 5
7 + 3
9 + 1
10 + 0
As a next step you can ask your child to record all of the different combinations as they make them. Then you could make a 20 holed box and practise number bonds to 20.
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