Learning Number Bonds with Ten Frames

Years ago, I made a post about number bonds and how my eldest used it at home to learn basic addition.  And now I’m working with it again with Vito, my almost 5 years old boy.  Months ago, he discovered the joy of adding numbers using his fingers so we started with basic addition using the Montessori Addition board.  He got tired with it quite a bit so I introduced number bonds.


There are so many ways to teach number bonds.  In our case I started with ten frames as he is already familiar with it.  For the past weeks he has worked with both our Playdough Ten Frames and School Bus Number Bonds.  The aim of this activity is to introduce the child to what two number combinations make up 1 to 10 (or more), basically two number parts to make a bigger number.  This knowledge becomes an essential skill in moving to addition and subtraction in advanced mathematics.

These are the available ten frames number bonds in the shop:

• Playdough Ten Frame Number Bonds
• School Bus Ten Frame Number Bonds
• Transportation (soon!)
• Acorn (soon!)
• Autumn themed (Soon!)

• Right now, we are working on the number combinations to form 10.  We’ve done a lot of practice on this through our Montessori addition board and Montessori snake game.  So when I worked on this activity with Vito using the ten frames, he was able to grasp the concept easily.

If you are interested in using this printable (which you can purchase from the shop), you need the following:

• Ten Frame Number Bonds learning pack
• Manipulatives like playdough, glass nuggets, snap cubes etc.
• Recording sheets (included in the learning material) and pencil.  Recording sheets are included so older kids can keep track of their work.

How it works?

1.  Choose what set of number bond you are going to use.  As I mentioned, we are working on the story of 10.
2.  Print, laminate, and cut the set: ten frame mats and matching cards.
3.  Start discussing with the child/student the things to do with the worksheet (fill up the blank frames to complete the count indicated by the number in the worksheet).  Here, you can do a lot of counting activities  and definitely do a “counting on” exercises wherein the child will not count from 0 or 1 but from the count that is already given in the ten frames mat.


4.  Encourage the child to recite the count as he places the manipulatives in the blank frame. 
5.  From here, you can show the child how number bonds are represented.  Our learning materials include the matching cards needed to represent the counts in the ten frames mats.  The blank matching cards are perfect for older children.  Encourage the child to write the missing number in the number bonds to match it to the ten frames mats.

Here are some more previews of the learning materials.  For more information, visit our shop and check the details of each material.



We are still working on another number bond set and I will share about this in my next post!

More learning materials at Pinay Homeschooler Shop.

For FREE learning materials check out our FREE Downloads and FREE Learning Materials page.

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