Zero

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2003 : July : 24

Zero
By maryellen

My kids love when Zero comes. When we're bundling the 10 sticks and moving them into the 10's box, we sing (to Frere Jacques) "Zero the Hero, Zero the Hero, we like you, we like you. Although you may be nothing, we really
think you're something, Yes we do, yes we do." I have a poster of Superman's face - it used to be the hangar for a halloween costume. They locate that poster somewhere in the room, and that's where his bag of surprises is. The poem on the back reads "Zero the Hero, came to school, Zero the Hero, he's no fool. Zero the Hero stays in his space, so all the other numbers get in the right

place". I show them without zero, we'd be in school only 3 days instead of 30!

Zero always brings something round like a zero. It could be dot stickers, cheerios, smarties, mini cookies/crackers. I usually already have them sorted into 23 little ziplocs. We do something in math time with these items; some ideas are graph, sort, count by 2, 5, 10, or use them for markers in a bingo game. Once he brought dollar ztore gold medals on a ribbon for everyone - when we were studying the Olympics. And once he brought mandarin oranges which we peeled and grouped by 2, and then graphed to see how many segments were most often found. If it was a snack, we eat it.

I really like hearing the kids say "Its day 47, only 3 days til zero comes." They're starting to think in groups of 10.