Preschool: The Number Zero

Lately, Luke’s preschool education has come to a screeching halt.  If learning his alphabet was an epic triumph, then learning his numbers has been a tragedy in 10 acts.  We’ve been working on the single digits.  He gets the concept of numbers.  He can count to 20.  He can group things appropriately.  But asking him to recognize a visual representation of a number is like asking Benjamin to say “Hi”.  In other words, impossible at this point.

We’ve done numbers 1-9, and have come to our final single digit:  0.  (Yes, probably should’ve done zero first; wasn’t thinking).

Today, I died a slow death during preschool, for ideally the last time.

He understands the idea of zero, but I was hoping to connect the visual representation today.  We played games involving the concept of zero.  On the stairs, he loved moving down a step when I said “one”, and staying still when I said “zero”.  He drew some zeros and used a dump truck to visualize zero vs. some other number.

Then, we moved onto the craft.  His favorite part.  Today, he made nice little zeros with random cardboard tubes and paint.

My studious little man loved it.  Neat, perfect zeros were carefully placed.

He did another sheet.  Experimentation with the cardboard tube began.

At one point, we counted the number of zero’s he had on his paper: five.

He then said, “What if we draw zero zero’s?”

I replied, “Luke, that’s not much of a craft.”

He held up a blank sheet of paper.  “I’m done.”

I wasn’t amused.  “Keep drawing.”

He did a few more sheets.  The number zero was completely out of his mind.

His final drawings were self-labeled “Poop” and “Poop in a Diaper”.

I hope he’s having fun, because I’m not.

Act 10:  The number zero.  Definitely a tragedy.