L16 – WWW – Reception Bonds to 5

Working Without Worksheets – Reception Maths: Number Bonds to 5 Help your Reception pupils develop early addition skills with this Working Without Worksheets lesson on number bonds to 5. Children explore all the different ways to make 5 through practical activities, visual modelling, and playful learning. The lesson begins with a starter activity: Teacher says: “Let’s make 5!” and holds up some fingers (e.g. 3). Children show the missing fingers to make 5. Repeat with different combinations, encouraging pupils to recite: “__ and __ make 5.” In the main input, the teacher uses 5 cupcakes to model number bonds in context: Show that there are 5 cupcakes in total. Share some with one character and ask: “How many cupcakes are there for Elephant?” Act it out and record pictorially on the slides. Reinforce that the total is always 5, using stem sentences like: “2 and 3 make 5.” For the independent activity, children explore number bonds to 5 in different hands-on ways: 5 Frame Fun – place 5 counters on a frame (all red). Turn them over one at a time until they are yellow, recording each combination. Build a Tower – use 2 colours of cubes to build towers of 5, then describe the number bond shown. Hop to 5 – chalk a number line 0–5 outdoors. Pupils stand on a number and count how many jumps they need to reach 5. The plenary brings children together to share the different number bonds they found and recite the stem sentence “__ and __ make 5.” What’s Included in the Pack? ✔ Full teacher planning with objectives, modelling, and plenary guidance ✔ Starter: finger counting to make 5 ✔ Teacher modelling: 5 cupcakes story context and pictorial recording ✔ Vocabulary focus: bond, total, part, whole, makes, add, equal ✔ Practical activities: 5 Frame Fun, Build a Tower, Hop to 5 ✔ Independent recording: verbal reasoning and book-based sentences ✔ Plenary: share and reinforce bonds to 5 aloud ✔ No worksheets—children learn through hands-on play and direct book recording Why Teache