Number Decomposition

Working on number decomposition? These playful, hands-on practice sheets are a must.

Try the sample below and the grab the complete pack in our shop! 

What Is Number Decomposition?

Number decomposition is just a fancy way of saying “understanding different combinations that make the same number.”

The number three, for example, has four different ways it can be made:

3 + 0, 2 + 1, 1 + 2 and 0 + 3

Knowing Where to Start

Before jumping into the activities, I gave Middle Brother (age 5) a quick assessment. I filled a cup with 10 counting beans and then dumped three of the beans into my hand.

I showed them to my son and asked him to quickly tell me how many beans I was holding.

“Three!” he called out immediately.

I placed the beans back in the cup and dumped five beans into my hand.

This time, when I showed him the set, he took a long pause and began counting the beans one by one.

Since I wanted to know the smallest number he could not instantly recognize, I knew I needed to do a little more testing. Three was too easy and five was too hard, so I pulled out four beans from the cup and showed them to him to see how he responded.

“That’s easy – four!” he said.

That was just the information I needed. He had three and four down but needed to start working on five.

I quickly printed the number five sheets and invited him over to join me again.

Number Decomposition

Middle Brother started with the unifix cube sheets first.

He built a stack of red unifix cubes, colored the picture to match and wrote the corresponding number sentence.

Then, he removed one of the red cubes and replaced it with a blue…

Middle Brother continued replacing just one brick at a time, coloring his picture and writing the matching number sentence.

Then, we swapped out the cubes for counting beans!

He shook his cup and dumped the five beans on the table.

Counting the number of reds and whites, he colored his picture and wrote the number sentence.

Then, we grabbed the two-colored counters and repeated the same steps again.

Once he had five down, we switched to number six!

The activity pack made it so easy to differentiate for his specific needs.

Grab Your Sample

Ready to start building number decomposition with your kids too?

Click the blue download button below to snag your sample and then hop over and grab the complete pack in our shop!