Monday, July 14, 2014

We’ve been practicing and learning addition using "Number Bonds" for the past days. We are taking a break from our Golden Beads Addition and exploring another approach to spice up our math lessons. It’s a surprise that after these activities, Mavi was able to memorize most of the "number combinations", the concept introduced through "Number Bonds", thus the ease of performing addition for him. We’ve done a couple of math activities before and I was surprised that these activities accelerated his math skills.

How to Teach Addition to Preschoolers Using Number Bonds

Teaching Addition with Number Bonds: Materials

Teaching Addition with Number Bonds: Introducing Number Bonds

Here we talked about the “whole” and “parts”. I gave a brief presentation of number bonds using Link Cubes and our Montessori Decanomial Beads. Mavi described the "Number Bonds" concept as “different combinations of numbers that make up bigger numbers.”

Teaching Addition with Number Bonds: Practicing with Number Combinations

Here Mavi completes the number combinations using counters and link cubes.

Teaching Addition with Number Bonds: What Makes a Number?

An activity that allows the child to match two numbers that will make up the number written on top. Again, I made him use the link cubes to help him.

Teaching Addition with Number Bonds: Guess the Number of LEGOs

Guess the number of LEGOs hidden in the cup. This is like making a number story.

I have 6 Legos and 2 are in the pink cup. Can you guess how many Legos are there in the green cup?

We reused the worksheets in the previous activity. We crossed out the number combination that comes out during the guessing game.

And that’s how we used the concept of number bonds to learn addition. My son had a great time and up until now he keeps on practicing number combinations by making stories and games.

Below are some of our learning materials on Number Bonds: