Number Bonds Eggs

I am so excited about this post!

It is that time of year to teach my firsties about number bonds. Number bonds are not always the easiest concept for 6 and 7 year olds to grasp so I wanted to come up with a fun way to teach them. If you are not familiar with what a number bond is exactly, check out our post, Number Bond Card Game, for an explanation.

If you are good to go with number bonds, here is the idea I came up with.

Number Bond Eggs

Materials

plastic eggs

Sharpie

small counters (pennies, pom poms, bingo chips etc.)

Creating the Eggs

I had a set of plastic eggs left over from last spring that was just waiting for the right idea to pop up. I pulled them out and wrote the numbers 1-6 on them with a Sharpie. You could choose any numbers, but I wanted to start simple since this is the first time these kids have worked with number bonds.

I went through my craft closet looking for small counters and came across these small wooden circles I saved somewhere along the way.

I put one piece into the egg marked 1, two in the egg marked 2. etc.

My number bond eggs are ready to use.

Using the Eggs

I am going to begin by telling my students that a number bond is like breaking a number apart into two parts and there are almost always more than one way to do it. I will then show them the first egg. Egg 4:

I will show the class that the Egg 4 has 4 counters inside and when the egg is broken/opened the 4 counters inside can fall into the two halves of the eggs in several different ways. I will then show them all the ways and explain how each broken egg is like a number bond.

The counters in Egg #4 can fall into the following combinations:

4+0

3+1

2+2

(and the turn-around facts)

0+4

1+3

2+2

We will then proceed to record the different number bonds for the number 4 on the white board or on chart paper. Then we can try it all again with the other numbers!

What do you think??

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