Addition: Number bonding to 10
for Kindergarten

Number bonding to 10

Number bonds are pairs of numbers that add up to a certain number. When we say "Number bonding to 10", what we are talking about are the pairs of smaller numbers that add up to 10. So, if we know that 8 plus 2 adds up to 10, we can say that 8 and 2 are a number pair that bond to 10.

All the numbers from 1 to 5 have a correspoding number that make them add up to 10. For the number 1, that is 9. For the number 2, as we saw, that is the number 8. For 3 it is 7, for 4 it is 6, and for 5 it is 5.

You can see that after 5, the pairs are the same only backwards, so 6 bonds with 4, 7 bonds with 3 and so on.

So we can write all the number bonds to 10 like this:

1 + 9       2 + 8       3 + 7       4 + 6       5 + 5       6 + 4       7 + 3       8 + 2       9 + 1

You will soon see that knowing these number pairs makes adding (and subtracting) a lot easier and quicker than if you have to work them out each time.